this is an overall entertaining read and one that has a massive societal importance. it often goes unrecognised just how difficult it is for a doctor during their residency.

I picked this one up because I'd heard it was funny - and there definitely were humorous anecdotes, but I didn't realize that the author had been training as an OBGYN so there are also some sad and terrifying anecdotes that I'd rather have not heard. It ends with the heartbreaking incident that caused him to quit medicine. Even though I'm not from the UK, I still took a lot away about the treatment of doctors and how healthcare doesn't prioritize the health of those that we rely on to keep us healthy.

Thanks to Little Brown and Netgalley for a copy to review.

Content warning: miscarriage, discussions of infertility

This book is so hilarious while also digging deep into more difficult events in the life of a doctor. It made the list of one of my top books of the year and I recommend it to everyone!

This book was laugh out loud! I love a hospital read that isn’t super heavy and this one is that!!

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy! (Sorry I’m so late on leaving the review.)

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to preview this ARC of This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay.

After reading this, I will read anything Adam Kay writes. He could talk about his favorite cereals for all I care. He is as endearing and hilarious, as he is vulnerable.

Adam is a OB/GYN who basically shares some of the most notable journal entries of his days in the clinic. From the outrageous, to heartbreaking, to hilarious, you get the full gambit. I laughed out loud several times in reading this, and I also felt so deeply for what his experience as a doctor was like. I really appreciated his "humanness" and how he works hard to portray how infallible doctors are, as well as glaring flaws in the medical system. It's not a long read, but it's just packed full of life.

Content warning: language and graphic descriptions of medical shenanigans

This book was hilarious. Adam Kay is a obgyn and tells the tales of being a doctor from the very beginning. It was laugh out loud funny many times throughout the book. If you want a lighthearted and fun read, this is the book for you.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy for an honest review.

Adam Kay shares his experiences training as an OBGYN, from the gory stories that made me cringe, to the devastating loss of patients, to the destruction of his personal relationships due to the long hours and last-minute demands. It sounds like a nightmare, but he keeps a great attitude about it. Some parts of it are genuinely very funny. Some parts are genuinely revolting.

I devoured this book in a single sitting. It is rare to find a book that can make you laugh and cry in equal measure-- especially, I think, a nonfiction book --but this one managed it just fine. Hilarious and touching, I am giving this book to everyone I know in the medical field.

This is Going to Hurt by Adam Key is marketed as the secret diaries of a medical resident. Unfortunately the title refers how I felt while reading the book. I appreciate that medical residents have a strenuous and stressful schedule. Mr. Key assumes that the rest of us are complete idiots who have never heard of any medical procedures or illnesses/conditions. The fact that practically everything had to be explained was a red flag that he was searching for filler. The secret diaries were just brief lines for the most part of things that may (or may not) have happened to the author. Better books dealing with the same subject are available. I am encouraging you to skip this one and avoid the pain I felt!

This Is Going To Hurt was a really thought provoking book. I admit, I don't usually worry too much about doctors, who seem to get out of medical school and then coast through the rest of life seeing patients oh, three times a week for nine months of the year. But this book made me realize that yes, there are still doctors who really and truly care about practicing medicine, about trying to get their patients care in a broken system, and that it takes a toll.

Adam Kay is such an interesting writer. I was hooked from the very beginning. I really enjoyed how I felt like I was going through all the years with him. Some stories made me cry, some made me laugh out loud, and so many taught me things. This was thoroughly enjoyable and I'm glad it exists.

After reading "This Is Going To Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor" by Adam Kay I have a newfound respect for doctors and nurses.
Adam Kay was a junior doctor from 2004 until 2010 and this is the diary he kept throughout his training. He also added helpful footnotes to explain any medical terms not familiar with readers.
His fascinating account of his life as a doctor was painfully honest, heart-warming and many times hilarious. He explains in great detail his many experiences (including some that made my stomach turn) and the struggles he endured until he got to the point when he made the heart breaking decision to leave his devoted career. Adam's understandable departure from medicine is a great loss to his community and humanity. There are too few doctors with his wit, personality, compassion and devotion.
I highly recommend this captivating read!

Thank you to NetGalley, author Adam Kay and Little, Brown and Company for an arc of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

This book was ok. Insider look of what training can be like for a medical professional. Some were short entries, some were longer. But, as I was reading about the long hours, the tiredness encountered, I found myself asking, a”When was the time found to keep notes”? Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the arc of this book in return for my honest opinion about this book. Receiving the book in this manner had no bearing on my review.

I am obsessed with all things medical but not in the profession. I loved laughing during this book and learning more tales from the medical professionals. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a funny story and who it interested in the medical side that we don’t often see!

Warning: this book is going to hurt.

Your body will hurt from laughter. Your laughter will irritate those around you and you will be relegated to a separate room, causing hurt feelings. Or--they will be jealous of the fun you are having and that will hurt their feelings.

Your head will hurt considering all the things that can go wrong in delivering a baby.

And your heart will hurt learning the sacrifices and ordeals required to become a doctor.

In This Is Going to Hurt, Adam Kay, NHS ob/gyn doctor shares stories from the surgical rooms and hospital beds that are unbelievable. I can't even share some of the stories here. Let's just say that people can do some pretty strange things and eating a hospital spoon is one of the less strange ones in this book. His stories in the delivery room can be pretty funny and pretty gruesome.

Kay is funny and politically incorrect and some of his stories are scandalous.

And yet I 'got' so much of his experience.

There are the high costs of becoming a doctor: expensive schooling, the long hours, being on call, the lack of time for a personal life and family, the meager salary and unpaid overtime, the emotional drain that makes you create a hard shell, the stress, the burn-out. Many professionals can relate to these issues.

It is the heavy burden of being held accountable for life and death decisions that is unique to medical careers. Human error--a slip of the hand or a misdiagnosis in the medical record, the things you can't control--and the doctor goes home feeling they weren't good enough, alert enough, smart enough, lucky enough.

Kay's experience in the British National Health Service could be a warning to Americans considering national health care options. To keep costs down, the NHS caps salaries. Low pay and long hours contribute to staffing problems.

Kay mentions he has to pay for parking. So do patients. Some doctors leave England to work in for-profit systems.

But the UK medical system rating is quite a bit above the US. It's doing something right.

Kay's writing reminded me of David Sedaris. I laughed, I was embarrassed by what I was laughing at, and Kay engaged my mind and my heart.

I received access to a free ebook through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

I received a digital ARC from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

I wasn't sure what I was getting into with this book. The style of the writing is different from what I'm use to. But it works! It's like diary entries, some short paragraphs or a couple of pages.

The voice told the story as he witnessed it. I laughed a lot and cried a bit.

The blurb wasn't super specific, so I thought this book would be in a typical memoir format, perhaps with one long and significant anecdote per chapter, but this book is quite literally in diary format, save for the little preludes at the beginning of each chapter, marking a new post of his residency.

Most of the diary entries are quite short, just a few paragraphs long, if even, making for a quick, punchy read.

To get a sense of the writing, here's an excerpt from one of my favourite anecdotes:

"Later, I realize there actually would be a way to practice the exact kind of small motor skills I need ahead of time. I text my mom to ask if she by any chance still has that game of Operation tucked away in a drawer.
"She replies to say she's found it. She also has a Magic 8-Ball, she tells me, in case I need it for my diagnoses."

The book was hilarious. Until it was devastating.

"Patients don't actually think of doctors as being human. It's why they're so quick to complain if we make a mistake or if we get cross. It's why they'll bite our heads off when we finally call them into our over-running clinic room at seven p.m., not thinking that we also have homes we'd rather be at. But it's the flip side of not wanting your doctor to be fallible, capable of getting your diagnosis wrong. They don't want to think of medicine as a subject that anyone on the planet can learn, a career choice their mouth-breathing cousins could have made."

Let's just say that I'm not going to be complaining about waiting too long at the hospital anymore. I mean, I'm not one to cause a nuisance with my complaints anyway; I'm much more of a sit-quietly-and-stew-resentfully kinda gal ;)

The last time I visited the ER was to accompany a friend, and in my opinion we had to wait for quite awhile considering the hospital seemed so quiet, though I suppose that's preferable to the ER being in utter chaos. We almost left without seeing the doctor because my friend's blood was already clotting over and it seemed like she was out of the danger zone. But we stayed since we had already come all the way and waited for so long. Four hours later, the doctor finally arrived, gave my friend ten stitches on her finger, and sent us home.

Anywho, this was such an entertaining read (while being a fan of Grey's Anatomy isn't a good reason to go into medicine, it's a good reason to give this book a try. It's like Grey's but without the melodrama. Maybe it's more like Scrubs. Not much like House), and an insightful look at the incredible lengths health-care workers go for their patients, "[working] harder than ever for less money than ever," despite all the crazy shit and sad shit they have to put up with.

If you don't feel like reading the whole book (though I would highly recommend it, both for your enjoyment and your education), I'll pass on Kay's message:

"Next time the government tries to denigrate doctors or take a pickax to the health-care system, don't just accept what the politicians feed you. Think about the toll the job takes on every medical professional, at home and at work. Remember all of them do an absolutely impossible job to the very best of their abilities. Your time in the hospital may well hurt them a lot ore than it hurts you."

I hope I can get my hands on his holiday special Twas The Nightshift Before Christmas before Christmas!

Lots of funny anecdotes that turned into an eye-opening look at what it was like for one man working as a doctor (OBGYN) with the NHS in England.

I just wish he would have told us what the treatment plan and result was for the guy with the unfortunate de-gloving injury!

Author’s Bio

This is Going to Hurt was written by Adam Kay. In this book he shares his personal anecdotes as a doctor working in the British National Health Service (NHS) during early 2000s. His recollections come from a diary he kept, detailing the ups and downs of life on the wards. Kay was inspired to write this book after a senior member of the government had made a claim that junior doctors, expecting to work less than 79 hours per week, were greedy. In This is Going to Hurt, Kay shows us the extremes of being a young doctor in the modern NHS.

Who is the Target Audience?

This is Going to Hurt is suitable for all those interested professionals or amateurs who find the life of doctors to be scintillating reading. Kay doesn’t spare us the gritty facts of life of a junior doctor and later a Senior Registrar. In this book there are some really funny tales and some truly dreadful stories of life and death. If you enjoy blood and guts descriptions of desperately sad and appalling ends, then you may enjoy the wild ride hanging on the white coat tails of Dr. Kay. If you are British, you may also gain a greater appreciation for the young medics that you interact with during your health visits.

Synopsis

The most significant part of This is Going to Hurt is dedicated to the abuse and neglect that many doctors are exposed to working within the British NHS. Dr. Kay discloses the scarcity of essential amenities required for proper medical care in the NHS. He explains the long hours of unpaid work forced upon doctors. He describes the lack of sleep and the abandonment of family, friends, and holidays. Worst of all, he describes how the enumeration is woefully inadequate for the myriad of drawbacks. Ultimately, after long periods of neglect by his employers a life altering incident prompts a change in his thinking and eventually leads him on a new path.

Conclusion

Adam gives us a view of the true life of a doctor on the wards of a British NHS hospital. He reminds us that doctors are only human. They are not infallible; they need love, care, and respect as we all do. They have the failings we all share and he prompts us to realize that. Most of all he wants us to understand that neglecting those who care for us is dreadful and that we should value and cherish the sacrifices; social, financial and psychological that doctors working in the NHS endure to provide you with world class health service.

Acknowledgment

My sincere thanks go to: NetGalley, and Picador for affording me the opportunity to review This is Going to Hurt.

The ideal holiday gift for anyone in the medical profession. Truly funny and surprisingly insightful, sometimes heartbreaking, this book, in the form of diary entries of a young doctor in the UK from the mid-Oughties to 2010, reveals that the hospital system itself is a disaster, whether a country has national health care or not. The hospital system turns trainee doctors into zombies working 90+ hour weeks, and we can all agree that this is dangerous for patients.

I disagree strongly with the author on obstetric care (he is actually pro-elective cesarean and sees natural birth as a form of Russian roulette) but Kay was doing the best he could within the framework he'd been given, and cared about his patients a great deal. I can see how the hospital does not allow time for anything better than strapping birthing women to machines and shoving instruments into them at the first sign of any possible deviation from perfection (a "trace" from the fetal monitor).

The Royal College Gynaecology and Obstetrics website states that this is not recommended practice ten years later, but has the UK reformed labor wards to allow time for changing the mother's position, stopping oxytocin, giving fluids to the mother, etc. etc.? These diary entries make it clear that Kay had no time or energy for any alternatives and once performed 5 cesarean sections in a single evening. I would not have wanted to be #5.

People are bizarre, and Kay encounters the gamut of weird to completely insane patients, and his writing is wonderful. I was only disappointed that he didn't record more of these anecdotes (although the poor fellow needed to sleep sometime). The book contains a very satisfying number of gross-out stories involving bodily fluids. Kay also talks about how his life inside the hospital infringed on his personal life in a manner that was sometimes satisfying and rewarding, but far more often, just the opposite.

Kay is exactly the sort of person we all want to be our doctor (not for my births but for anything else). He's kind, he's compassionate, he's willing to give straight answers. With some exceptions, the hospital system is set up for monstrous narcissists and heartless automatons to succeed at being full-fledged physicians and for good guys like Kay to be chewed up and spat out, and national health care will not fix this problem. This is a good book to laugh along to, but also a book to begin that discussion.

"There may well be a light at the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel is eighty-five miles long, crammed full of impacted feces, and I have to eat my way out of it."

Adam Kay is reminiscent of a younger, British, former-doctor version of David Sedaris. I heart David Sedaris. And I do not make Sedaris comparisons all willy-nilly. Hey, that almost rhymed!

This Is Going to Hurt is Kay's debut memoir about his time as a junior doctor in the UK, which is mostly comprised of diary entries he logged between 2004 and 2010. As someone who spent her working hours between 2004 and 2010 mostly parked in front of a computer screen (yawn), I found the stories to be fascinating, hilarious, and sometimes nearly unbelievable. From extracting diverse objects (including a remote control, a toilet brush, a doll head, and a Kinder egg) from various orifices (I need not list them here; you know what they are) to dealing with a patient who drank other patients' urine samples to finding a spoon that had been left inside a woman post-op forty years prior, Kay saw his share of the strange things we humans do.

The footnotes along the way outlining various medical terms and procedures were immensely beneficial to my understanding of the materiel presented. But be warned: "I'm all for explaining terminology as we go along, but if you don't know what a stethoscope is, this is probably a book to regift."

Although much of the book is funny, Kay also gives the reader a look into the excessively long hours, terrible pay, and extreme stress that are the baggage that comes with being a doctor. And even though he opens the book confessing that he quit the profession in 2010, reading the story outlining the details as to why was absolutely heartbreaking. "Sorry for the spoiler, but by the way, you knew the iceberg was coming in Titanic, and you watched that all the same."

I shall close this review with a final word of advice: Do Not. Under Any Circumstances. Eat Foodstuffs While Reading This Book.

"A horror story. Patient GL, whose genetic makeup appears to be 50 percent goji-berry recipes and 50 percent yoga mats, has announced she wants to eat her placenta."

Thanks to Kay, NetGalley, and Little, Brown and Company for this ARC of the US-ivised version of this book which came with a handy-dandy conversion chart between US and UK doctor types, along with other US-ivised stuff that enhanced my understanding of the material presented. Yes, I know I just made up US-ivised. That's how I roll.