This Is Going to Hurt; Secret Diaries of a Medical Resident

New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2019. First North American Edition [stated]. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Lauren Burke (Jacket Art) and Idil Sukan (Author P. [10], 278 pages. Footnotes. DJ has minor wear and soiling. Adam Richard Kay (born 12 June 1980) is a British BAFTA-winning TV writer, author, comedian and former doctor. His television writing credits include This is Going to Hurt (TV series), Crims, Mrs. Brown's Boys and Mitchell and Webb. He is best known as author of the number-one bestselling book This Is Going to Hurt. Kay worked as a doctor between 2004 and 2010, leaving the profession after a patient's caesarean section was complicated by an undiagnosed placenta praevia; the expectant mother was subsequently taken to the intensive care unit, while the baby was delivered stillborn, which left him with symptoms of PTSD. Kay worked for a number of years as an obstetrics and gynaecology junior doctor, writing textbooks on the subject, before leaving medicine for a career in writing. Kay's first book, This Is Going to Hurt, based on diaries from his former career as a doctor, was published by Picador in September 2017 and became a Sunday Times bestseller. The paperback edition was also a Sunday Times number one bestseller, a position it held for well over a year. It was the book of the year in the UK's 2018 National Book Awards. The book was well received by critics, including in the literary pages of The Times, Financial Times, Guardian, and The Scotsman. Bestselling author Adam Kay channels Henry Marsh and David Sedaris to tell us the hilarious -- and sometimes horrifying -- truth about life and work in a hospital. Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave goodbye to your friends and relationships. Welcome to the life of a first-year doctor. Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, comedian and former junior doctor Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the front lines of medicine. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking by turns, this is everything you wanted to know -- and more than a few things you didn't -- about life on and off the hospital ward. And yes, it may leave a scar. This is Going to Hurt is mostly composed of diary entries Adam Kay wrote during his medical training under the National Health Service. It was recommended to Kay to write this diary as a "reflective practice" in which he could log any interesting clinical experiences he experienced throughout his training. Five years after his resignation, Kay was officially removed from the medical register which prompted him to dispose of all the medical files he had been storing, leading him to review his reflective journal. Around this time in 2015, junior doctors entered contract disputes with the NHS leading the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Jeremy Hunt, to accuse junior doctors of being greedy. This event motivated Kay to respond to this accusation by releasing This is Going to Hurt, which illustrates his own experiences as a junior doctor. The most prevalent theme present in This is Going to Hurt is the mistreatment and neglect that doctors have to endure. Throughout his time working for the NHS, Adam Kay was deprived of multiple basic amenities that other occupations have. Kay was forced to stay hours after his shift would end with no pay, be unable to have a sick day or go on holiday because it was extremely difficult to find someone to cover his shift; while on shift, he would be unable to sleep even if he had free time; and, in general, junior doctors like Kay felt severely underpaid for their services. This sense of neglect was emphasized after Kay's career-ending event since he wasn't allowed to take any time off to emotionally recover. The next day he was forced to go back to work even though he was not in the right mindset to and had asked for a week off. No therapy was offered to Kay to possibly help him after the traumatic event, further debilitating his emotions and mind.