Adam Kay’s blisteringly funny memoir of his British medical apprenticeship, This Is Going to Hurt, leaves you thinking that Kay missed his true calling, as a comedy writer ... a staccato series of wry anecdotes and punch lines. The brief diary entries offer a view of humanity, as well as medicine, in all its glorious imperfection. But they also point cumulatively to a systemic critique. They chronicle how, over time, a dedicated and gifted physician can be ground down by the profession’s unnecessarily brutal demands ... a boon for comedy.
Reading this book is going to hurt, but mainly from holding your sides with the laughter it induces ... It might be hard to see the funny side of being covered in a tsunami of body fluids, witnessing (and smelling) the travails of labour and Caesarean sections or retrieving all sorts of strange objects from various orifices, but Kay conveys it humorously in his writing ... But the suffering, loss and sorrow that went with the job are not ignored, or the shortcomings of the system – ridiculous hours and poor pay – that cause so many good doctors to leave.
As Kay’s diary of his time as a junior doctor so eloquently shows, medics are used to tragedy ... Kay is now a comedy writer, and his frank and excruciatingly funny book, inspired by the 2016 junior doctors’ dispute, is also a moving tribute to the people without whom the NHS couldn’t function.
Kay has an edgy tone as he alternates between gallows humor and heartbreaking tales. Frequent footnotes explain medical terms in very accessible language ... eaders may be inclined to send their own doctors a thank-you note after reading this candid, caring memoir.
