A review by verlkonig
This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay
4.0
This book gave me whiplash from laughing my head off one second to being utterly stony faced the next.
Kay describes his life in the NHS as a doctor through short diary entries. Each entry is so telling, describing the sad state of affairs that our NHS is in, expressing the lifestyle of NHS workers, and delving into the gritty realities of our health system and how we treat it. It is all wittily told and extremely accessible - there's no need to have any prior knowledge about the NHS or medicine. I laughed through most of it, from the hilarious description of a man mistakenly believing his new baby had no face, to a short anecdote about a nurse who always mixed up the words 'cocoon' and 'coma'. Other entries are still funny, but also truly, horrifically, disgusting. I will never look at a KFC bucket or a fireman sam bath sponge the same way again.
The laughs are balanced with some truly heartbreaking moments. This is a book set in a hospital, after all, and realistically, not everyone gets to be discharged. Plus, some of the insight into our NHS and how it operates will both anger and sadden you with how outrageously unkind it is to its employees.
Kay describes his life in the NHS as a doctor through short diary entries. Each entry is so telling, describing the sad state of affairs that our NHS is in, expressing the lifestyle of NHS workers, and delving into the gritty realities of our health system and how we treat it. It is all wittily told and extremely accessible - there's no need to have any prior knowledge about the NHS or medicine. I laughed through most of it, from the hilarious description of a man mistakenly believing his new baby had no face, to a short anecdote about a nurse who always mixed up the words 'cocoon' and 'coma'. Other entries are still funny, but also truly, horrifically, disgusting. I will never look at a KFC bucket or a fireman sam bath sponge the same way again.
The laughs are balanced with some truly heartbreaking moments. This is a book set in a hospital, after all, and realistically, not everyone gets to be discharged. Plus, some of the insight into our NHS and how it operates will both anger and sadden you with how outrageously unkind it is to its employees.