Skip to main content

Main menu

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • BJGP LIFE
  • MORE
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • eLetters
    • Alerts
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Librarian information
    • Resilience
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers

User menu

  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
British Journal of General Practice
Intended for Healthcare Professionals
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers
  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in
  • Follow bjgp on Twitter
  • Visit bjgp on Facebook
  • Blog
  • Listen to BJGP podcast
  • Subscribe BJGP on YouTube
Intended for Healthcare Professionals
British Journal of General Practice

Advanced Search

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • BJGP LIFE
  • MORE
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • eLetters
    • Alerts
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Librarian information
    • Resilience
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
Life & Times

Books: This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor

Only When I Laugh

Maryam Naeem
British Journal of General Practice 2018; 68 (668): 140. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp18X695177
Maryam Naeem
Tulasi Medical Centre, Dagenham, Essex, UK. E-mail:
Roles: GP
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: maryam.naeem@icloud.com
  • Article
  • Figures & Data
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF
Loading
Kay Adam Picador, 2017, HB, 288pp, £16.99, 978-1509858613
Figure

There are few books that have made me laugh so hard that I have had tears rolling down my cheeks, fewer still those that have moved me to tears and, until now, none that has done both. Adam Kay’s unflinching, no-holds-barred, often brutal yet elegiac and humane memoir of his time as a junior obstetrician did both.

This is Going to Hurt chronicles the life and times of one junior doctor, Dr Adam Kay, from a house job in 2004 to a senior registrar post in 2010. Kay writes with a razor-sharp wit coupled with a knowing melancholy that will strike a chord with all of his readers, lay and doctor alike. Every chapter has its own gems but some of my favourites include the deceptively simple task of trying to establish how many weeks pregnant a patient is: ‘I ask a patient in antenatal clinic how many weeks she is now. There’s a long pause. Cogs turn. A camera slowly pans across a wasteland … has she got amnesia? … I start to ask when her last period was, and she interrupts’“Well I’m 32 in June so that’s got to be more than a thousand weeks…” Christ.’

Another is Kay lamenting in his uniquely funny way about today’s on-call consultant: ‘Prof Carrow is the consultant on call for labour ward today, which is about as much use as having a cardboard cutout of Cher on call for labour ward. In fact, Cardboard Cher might at least raise morale a bit.’

Underneath the laughs and between the lines This is Going to Hurt is not just a working memoir, it is a political essay raising questions that if looked at objectively and perhaps outside of medicine beggar belief. Running an antenatal clinic one registrar down and seeing twice the number of patients one has the time or the capacity for, Kay ruminates: ‘I strongly suspect that if I was a pilot and my co-pilot didn’t turn up, the airline might find a better solution than “plough ahead and see what happens”.’

Further musings on the creeping increasing privatisation of the NHS and a concluding open letter to the Secretary of State for Health read like a call to arms for all of us who work in this beloved yet beleaguered institution: the NHS.

It would not be a spoiler alert to reveal that ultimately, after 6 years of study and a further 6 gruelling years on the wards, Kay walked away from medicine because he discloses this within the first sentence of the book; in the final chapter however he narrates with painstaking detail the case that acted as a catalyst for his resignation.

The harrowing nature of the case and the damning indictment of the way the NHS supports — or rather fails to support — its frontline staff leave you feeling that what is Kay’s gain by walking away is surely the NHS’s and his patients’ loss.

  • © British Journal of General Practice 2018
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

In this issue

British Journal of General Practice: 68 (668)
British Journal of General Practice
Vol. 68, Issue 668
March 2018
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author
Download PDF
Download PowerPoint
Article Alerts
Or,
sign in or create an account with your email address
Email Article

Thank you for recommending British Journal of General Practice.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person to whom you are recommending the page knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Books: This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from British Journal of General Practice
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from British Journal of General Practice.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Books: This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor
Maryam Naeem
British Journal of General Practice 2018; 68 (668): 140. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp18X695177

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero

Share
Books: This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor
Maryam Naeem
British Journal of General Practice 2018; 68 (668): 140. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp18X695177
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley

Jump to section

  • Top
  • Article
  • Figures & Data
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF

More in this TOC Section

  • The tortuous path of progress
  • Books: Scattered Limbs. A Medical Dreambook
  • Books: Finding the Mother Tree. Uncovering the Wisdom and Intelligence of the Forest
Show more Life & Times

Related Articles

Cited By...

Intended for Healthcare Professionals

BJGP Life

BJGP Open

 

@BJGPjournal's Likes on Twitter

 
 

British Journal of General Practice

NAVIGATE

  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • All Issues
  • Online First
  • Authors & reviewers

RCGP

  • BJGP for RCGP members
  • BJGP Open
  • RCGP eLearning
  • InnovAiT Journal
  • Jobs and careers

MY ACCOUNT

  • RCGP members' login
  • Subscriber login
  • Activate subscription
  • Terms and conditions

NEWS AND UPDATES

  • About BJGP
  • Alerts
  • RSS feeds
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

AUTHORS & REVIEWERS

  • Submit an article
  • Writing for BJGP: research
  • Writing for BJGP: other sections
  • BJGP editorial process & policies
  • BJGP ethical guidelines
  • Peer review for BJGP

CUSTOMER SERVICES

  • Advertising
  • Contact subscription agent
  • Copyright
  • Librarian information

CONTRIBUTE

  • BJGP Life
  • eLetters
  • Feedback

CONTACT US

BJGP Journal Office
RCGP
30 Euston Square
London NW1 2FB
Tel: +44 (0)20 3188 7400
Email: journal@rcgp.org.uk

British Journal of General Practice is an editorially-independent publication of the Royal College of General Practitioners
© 2022 British Journal of General Practice

Print ISSN: 0960-1643
Online ISSN: 1478-5242