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This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor Paperback – January 1, 2018

by Adam Kay (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 101,810 ratings
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  1. Language
    English
  2. Publisher
    Picador
  3. Publication date
    January 1, 2018
  4. Dimensions
    7.76 x 0.75 x 5.12 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    1509858636
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1509858637
  7. See all details
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  1. You don’t cure depression, the same way you don’t cure asthma; you manage it. I’m the inhaler he’s decided to go with and I should be pleased he’s gone this long without an attack.
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From the Publisher

This is Going to Hurt, Doctor, Humour, Hilarious, Health Services, Adam Kay, Hospital

This is Going to Hurt, Doctor, Humour, Hilarious, Health Services, Adam Kay, Hospital

This is Going to Hurt, Doctor, Humour, Hilarious, Health Services, Adam Kay, Hospital

This is Going to Hurt, Doctor, Humour, Hilarious, Health Services, Adam Kay, Hospital

This is Going to Hurt, Doctor, Humour, Hilarious, Health Services, Adam Kay, Hospital

This is Going to Hurt, Doctor, Humour, Hilarious, Health Services, Adam Kay, Hospital

This is Going to Hurt, Doctor, Humour, Hilarious, Health Services, Adam Kay, Hospital

This is Going to Hurt, Doctor, Humour, Hilarious, Health Services, Adam Kay, Hospital

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; Main Market Ed. edition (January 1, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1509858636
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1509858637
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.76 x 0.75 x 5.12 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 101,810 ratings

About the author

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Adam Kay

Adam Kay

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Adam Kay is an award-winning writer and former non-award-winning junior doctor. His first book "This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor" was a Sunday Times number one bestseller for over a year and has sold over 3 million copies in 37 languages. It was followed up by number one bestsellers "Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas" and "Undoctored".

He is also one of the UK's bestselling children's authors, with "Kay's Anatomy" the fastest-selling nonfiction kids' book of the decade. Other children's books include "Kay's Marvellous Medicine" and his first picture book "Amy Gets Eaten".

adamkay.co.uk

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
101,810 global ratings
Poignant, hilarious, heartbreaking reflection on the current state of medicine
5 Stars
Poignant, hilarious, heartbreaking reflection on the current state of medicine
‘This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries if a Junior Doctor” by Adam Kay is a tough but important read. The author starts off “After 6 years of training and a further 6 years on the wards, I resigned my job as a junior doctor. My parents still haven’t forgiven me" and finishes with “Why should anyone train to be a doctor anymore?” In between he recounts story after story of life as a medical student and trainee in obstetrics and gynecology in the UK around 2010. Between f-bombs, several stories about objects in body cavities and scrubs soaked in bodily fluids, the author weaves in his reflections on the medical profession now and where it’s going. The first 30ish pages are not engaging and I couldn’t identify with the author’s perspective but stick with the book because it comes through slowly in little hints. I finished the book thinking through the choices I’ve personally made and how tough it must have been for someone to walk away from the field he’s trained in for so long. It’s painful to be on the other side of medical training, very happy with my current career, colleagues, and choices, but remember just how hard it was to get here. The author pleas for hospitals and administration to care for the emotional wellness of physicians and all medical providers. Doctors are supposed to be superheroes and get to work no matter what but we are human too. We all need to ‘Chip away at the ingrained notion that doctors and nurses don’t need to, or shouldn’t, talk about (bad outcomes, mistakes, abuse from patients, insert more here) because that same ingrained notion is partly responsible for the huge rise in people leaving the profession, the rise in stress-related absence, illness, and…suicide. We all need someone to talk to..Care for the Carer." Excellent read. @drlorashahine
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Top reviews from the United States

Peanuts
5.0 out of 5 stars Oh my! English medicine is frightening.
Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2024
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If you think American medicine is lacking check out this read! Humorous indeed, but concerning as well.
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Alexius Julian
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, devastating and close to home.
Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2024
Verified Purchase
In reading this I was grateful for my medical training having taken place in Australia where juniors are more supported and the industrial agreements and unions have more teeth. That being said, it definitely hit close to home as days and situations like those Kay describes are still a fact of medical life across all specialities. The wellbeing of hospital staff is always an important issue which is critical to ensure patients are safe and well looked after.
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S. Humphreys
4.0 out of 5 stars Left Me With Muddled Opinion
Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2023
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A lot of humor amidst personal struggle to maintain oneself and keep going. I'm a retired ER nurse. I enjoyed the humor re the human condition, but not that it was primarily OB/GYN--just too narrowly focused for me. I have no idea how a non-medical person would receive this book, but it has great reviews from the same.
My general impression: Lots of humor. Lots of personal stress of the author--very justified stress from loss of all kinds. And then a sudden, heart-wrenching conclusion. The author warns us at the beginning that he left the field. Still, after so much humor, the conclusion was jarring. Perhaps because there was no forewarning--no thoughts of leaving prior to it happening. And, after all the humor, the sudden ending of disaster leaves the reader searching for an overall emotion to ascribe to the read. The ending makes the book something 360 degrees different than what I thought I was spending hours reading. It's a good book, I'm just not sure whom I'd recommend it to.
One person found this helpful
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Xanadu
5.0 out of 5 stars Raw, honest, and well-written
Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2020
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This was a difficult book to read because it's a collection of the author's thoughts about the end of her life, when she was diagnosed at age 37 with stage 4 (metastatic) colon cancer. She was a loving mother to two very young girls, wife to her husband, daughter to her parents, and sister to her older siblings. It was a devastating diagnosis and a heartbreaking journey that she took for the next almost five years, until she sadly died painful death characteristic of many stage 4 cancers. Her intent was to have this chronicle of her death published posthumously as almost a love letter to her family. What a gift for them!

I found her thoughts were raw and honest and the book was very well-written. I only wish we learned more about her life and culture as a nearly blind Chinese refuge who escaped on an over-crowded fishing boat to Hong Kong from Vietnam -- all before she emigrated to the United State at age four.

What I don't understand are the many harsh reviews. How can people criticize her painful journey towards her premature death and the treatment and other decisions she made along the way? How can reviewers tell her which spiritual or religious paths she should have taken? How can people be jealous of the fact that she studied very hard and graduated from an elite college and law school and that she and her husband made a generous living by working hard, long hours? Or that she didn't have to work while she was undergoing chemotherapy because her husband was earning a living? Why does this book necessarily have to be compared to Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air memoir, a book I also read and admire? Can't Kalanithi's and Yip-Williams's memoirs stand on their own for their own merits and the life stories they told? Why are reviewers faulting the book because it's sad and depressing at times? How could a book about a young woman and mother in her prime of life dying from cancer NOT be sad or depressing?

I just don't understand the harsh reviews. However, I recommend the book if you want to hear about how one person dealt with a devastating and painful cancer diagnosis.
11 people found this helpful
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Susan
5.0 out of 5 stars Equal parts hilarious and moving
Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2023
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Being American, my knowledge of NHS is slim, with the exception of the information I get from reading the large amount of UK lit I read.

However, Adam paints a picture of slapstick and moving me to tears. As a citizen of the planet, I'm outraged by some of the corners he has to cut over the course of his years as a doctor to make sure things are funded by the NHS, but at the same point, I think of the broken system here in America where millions have no health insurance, and I think, is that better? Just because I HAVE secure health insurance, doesn't mean that even my neighbor does. (Which I know for a fact, they don't)

Although, politically, there was definitely outrage, and I was very much changed by this book by the low points, Adam's high points and his hilarity had me in stiches at many points, the overall point of this book was not lost on me.

And the next time I go to the ER, I will be nicer to that doctor that seems like he has a bug in his butt. Who knows what happened with his last patient?
6 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Rafaëlle Demontis
5.0 out of 5 stars Quase uma autobiografia médica.
Reviewed in Brazil on December 25, 2022
Verified Purchase
Como também médica recém-formada, muitas frases lidas até a então metade do livro parecem tiradas da minha cabeça – risada garantida. Está sendo uma leitura muito prazerosa, ainda mais por ter perdido o costume de leitura não-acadêmica após tantos anos entre pré-vestibular e faculdade.
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Harry_Hood
5.0 out of 5 stars Not funny … just true
Reviewed in Germany on February 4, 2024
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The blurb and publicity praise the book as an adorably funny satire on the hospital business. Yes, it is funny, it is set in Great Britain, mainly in gynaecology and in the British NHS healthcare system, but it is not (actually) satire. It is an exact description of a doctor's work and, apart from a few deviations (our specialist training does not follow exactly the same pattern), it can be transferred exactly to Germany, to everything that goes wrong, to everything that is a daily burden for all employees in the healthcare system. Even many of the situations that seem very strange or even absurd to outsiders have probably been experienced in the same or a similar way by almost everyone who has worked in a hospital for a few years. I am sure that they happened in exactly the same way and were not invented by the author. In particular - and this is where the book ends - it is an indictment of the complete disregard shown by politicians for the people who work in hospitals or elsewhere on a daily basis. But in the end it doesn't matter. Even our current Minister of Health, Mr Lauterbach, would probably not change anything if he were to devote his precious time to this book at all, and would probably not even feel addressed. In this respect: absolutely worth reading, but also very depressing. Not funny.
One person found this helpful
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Cynthia
5.0 out of 5 stars Funny, insightful, heart breaking, thought provoking book about medical field
Reviewed in India on April 1, 2023
Verified Purchase
Must read for people who are contemplating about choosing their career as a doctor. Deeply insightful, funny, heart wrenching and last but not the least a must-read book!
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Molly
5.0 out of 5 stars Funny
Reviewed in Italy on January 7, 2023
Verified Purchase
Such a fun and particularly British book - two thirds are about his time in the gynae department so it might be a difficult read for pregnant women (as myself atm) at times, but fun nonetheless
One person found this helpful
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Mrs. L. A. Lee
5.0 out of 5 stars FIVE stars ……from me……Enjoyable, funny, heartbreaking reading……I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 25, 2022
Verified Purchase
Well…..I have read the reviews.
I have read the book from first page to last. I don’t always leave reviews but in this book I felt compelled to say what I thought…so here goes…
I can relate to Adam’s writing as a former NHS nurse who also dipped her toe into the private sector and the HMP Prison nursing arena. Humour is a necessity in order to survive the NHS it’s humour that gets most of us through the gruelling shifts, the unhappy patients SORRY clients, the angry relatives, the happy outcome we all strive to achieve.
There is a raw truth to Adam’s book that is sadly still a reality of the NHS today…..his writing and description was well written of the topic being discussed. He explained in detail to assist the reader through each scenario/chapter. I do confess to laughing out loud at one part in the book I won’t spoil it for you suffice to say I hope you will also laugh at the sentence “ the thieving little #@# “ I could just picture the scene in my head and yes I admit I laughed and still laugh as I think of it and the way Adam describes it as anyone of us could have been that nurse uttering those words following such a gruelling search to find a “lost swab”
Adam is telling his experience of working in a overworked underpaid NHS but like the rest of us he gets up the next day and goes to work to help others, he stayed the extra hours that were unpaid as he couldn’t walk away from someone in need, so his working day became longer but his patients/clients were looked after most days he like the rest of us would fall into bed and a welcomed sleep knowing that they had done there very best at work.
Adam came across to me as a dedicated caring person doing the best he could under harrowing at times circumstances Adam is a good doctor …..he cared. If you decide to read this book do so with an open mind you will read raw emotions, swear words, feelings and tempers will be raised at times but also the important being is all is controlled by Adam and he does his very best for his patients Ooops clients. I look forward to reading Adam’s next book as I enjoyed his writing style his honesty and I GET IT I understood what he was aiming to convey to the reader he portrayed a reality many of us face daily, but at the end of day the famous words “to thine own self be true” ring out loud and clear for me. Thank you Adam for a enjoyable funny and at times heartbreaking read.
12 people found this helpful
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