A review by fatherroderick
Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas by Adam Kay

3.0

A shorter follow-up book by Adam Kay to his book “This is Going to Hurt”, about a number of nightshirts on Christmas Eve he did at the hospital. Most of us hopefully rarely end up in the hospital, and may base our idea of what happens ‘behind the scenes’ on TV-series we’ve watched. So it is interesting to get a first-hand account of the often tough life of the professionals that work at the hospital day and night. The anonymized anekdotes are often funny, sometimes shocking, never mundane. But my issue with the book is the same as the one I had with “This is Going to Hurt”, and it concerns the author himself. I keep wondering why he works at the hospital (or worked, because he left his job to pursue a career as a writer). Why do you care for others, when you say you don’t believe in God, you often see patients as ‘cases’ instead of as persons, how you can be moved by certain patients or by the delivery of a baby, but also write about many people in derogatory terms… He describes the gruesome aspects of a late-term ‘termination of pregnancy’ in detail, tells us how much he dreads the ‘procedure’ but still continues with it.. It is often so contradictory, and has me wondering if the author uses humor to shield himself from his inner conflicts about his work. The book makes me appreciate the hard work of medical professionals even more, but at the same time it reveals the urgent need for morals and ethical formation of the people involved. Not just for the sake of their patients, but also for the well-being of themselves.