This is Going to Hurt book review

This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay
on September 7, 2017
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The Sunday Times Number One Bestseller and Humour Book of the YearWinner of the Books Are My Bag Book of the YearWinner of iBooks' Book of the Year
Welcome to the life of a junior doctor: 97-hour weeks, life and death decisions, a constant tsunami of bodily fluids, and the hospital parking meter earns more than you.
Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know – and more than a few things you didn't – about life on and off the hospital ward.

As seen on ITV's Zoe Ball Book Club

This edition includes extra diary entries and a new afterword by the author.

This is Going to Hurt was written when Junior Doctors were making headlines whilst the Health Secretary was trying to dock their wages and you can definitely get the underlying feeling of anger and dismissal for the government throughout the entirety of the book. I was worried going in that this was going to be an outright political book that was really jarring to read but I have to say this was a pleasant combination of hilarious anecdotes as well as some really heartbreaking stories that really highlighted the issues that Junior Doctors face on a day to day basis. I really learnt a lot from this book, a lot more than what I thought I was going to and I really appreciated the honest look at the workings of the hospitals and had never really stopped to think about how they end up working out.

There aren’t characters for sure in This is Going to Hurt rather than patients and their stories and how they crossed Adam’s path. I think there was a certain strength within these stories because not only was there humour but there was such a great way of showing the realities of what life was like as a doctor. I feel as though I connected with each of the characters through his testimony, there was such honesty throughout them all and I really enjoyed them each for different reasons. I adored that there were some really heartbreaking stories that drove the points he was making. It was all really well written.

I think the humour was definitely my favourite part of This is Going to Hurt, there were some stories that had just been added for the sake of breaking up the seriousness of the subject. It was a great break and one that I really enjoyed, it still showed how great and how hard these doctors worked but also spun a funny vibe onto what they were dealing with on a day to day. I also loved how heartbreaking this book could be at moments, it really showed the world of maternity patients in a really raw sense.

Not a lot to be honest. I did feel like some of the stories were a little on the short side and I would have loved for more information on some of the patients.

Yes I really would recommend This is Going to Hurt it offers a great insight into the world of the doctors and I really adored the way it was told. We should definitely pay more attention to this group of people.

Have you read this one? What did you think? Let me know!