This Is Going to Hurt

This is going to make you both-hands-covering-face cringe on one page and have you in stitches on another. The intro says something about shredding files faster than Jimmy Carr's accountant and that makes me roll on the floor laughing. I don't care who on earth this Jimmy Carr is.

The book is a collection of Adam Kay's seven-year diary entries from the time he starts at the NHS as a House Officer until he quits as a Senior Registrar in 2010. He writes about the grueling schedule, the immense amount of pressure, the pay, the toll the work takes on personal lives, the things he found stuck inside patients' bodies, the good days, and the bad days. Honestly, to many outsiders, the NHS is one of the best healthcare systems in the world. But behind this world-envied and other healthcare institutions around the world, too, obvs, there is an army of hardworking medical heroes who sacrifice a lot.

There's no particular one long storyline to follow in the book other than you know that Kay would quit eventually. But each page is either a stand-up comedy delight or the other side of reality that also tugs at your heartstrings: from waiting for a patient's "intellectual satellite delay to catch up" (5 May 2009 entry -- one of my favourites), to treating degloving injury, to helping a suicidal friend.

The book reminds me of how tough and no-nonsense medical profession is. Right from the med school, I imagine medical students cannot just "wing it" during exams. Allegedly, Accounting / Business / Management students can 😜.

And I'm jealous of Kay for writing this. Many of us have good* stories at work (*also allegedly). Some of us think about sharing them but never do. But Kay does. It sooper-helps that he's a super talented writer and comedian. Still, many of us only think about doing something but end up not acting on it.

This is a must-read.

Image: Picador