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  • This Is Going to Hurt

  • Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor
  • By: Adam Kay
  • Narrated by: Adam Kay
  • Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (27,163 ratings)

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This Is Going to Hurt

By: Adam Kay
Narrated by: Adam Kay
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Summary

Winner of a record three National Book Awards: Non-Fiction Book of the Year, New Writer of the Year and Zoe Ball Book Club Book of the Year.

The million-copy best seller. 

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.

Sunday Times number-one best seller and Humour Book of the Year.

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

©2017 Adam Kay (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio

Critic reviews

"Painfully funny. The pain and the funniness somehow add up to something entirely good, entirely noble and entirely loveable." (Stephen Fry)

What listeners say about This Is Going to Hurt

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Well written, Well told

Birth, death, and all the dirty stuff in between, Adam has written a fascinating account of being a Junior Doctor and beyond. In addition he tells his tales with the smoothness of a stage performer.
What's more, I'm a vet, and it's nice to know other medical professions get the same problems as we have. But nationalised, and with the health of the country on their shoulders.
Gods bless this NHS

115 people found this helpful

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Brilliant!

The best book I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. Adam Kay made me both howl with laughter and cry with sorrow. His writing is eloquent and his reading of the book is brilliant. I highly recommend it to everyone, Fellow NHS staff will empathise with him and his struggles. Non NHS staff should listen to it for an insight into a truly unique world.

72 people found this helpful

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Life is for enjoying not enduring.

If you could sum up This Is Going to Hurt in three words, what would they be?

Doctors need support.

What did you like best about this story?

The amount I learned.

What does Adam Kay bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

Feeling.

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Made me feel deeply for all those people who give their all for so little monetary return having to rely on their inner mental and emotional strength.

Any additional comments?

A must read that enables you help those who are helping you.

67 people found this helpful

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Heartbreaking and hilarious!

I hardly ever write reviews but this is such a great audiobook I had to! I've seen Adam perform his music live several times and love his dry sense of humour but this book is on another level - but gave me more to think about afterwards than I expected. Excellent as an audiobook read by him.

51 people found this helpful

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  • M
  • 21-12-17

Echoes what is happening in education too

Thanks for sharing this funny but heartbreaking tale of the issues leading up to the brain drain from the NHS and it’s ultimate privatisation. Wish you all the best in your new career but wish you’d been able to use your talents as a doctor as your empathy and emotional intelligence shine through the book.

27 people found this helpful

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A wonderful raconteur.

Probably not a good read if you are in the midst of pregnancy. But overall great anecdotes, not too ranty when it comes to the challenges of the NHS, incredibly funny in places and make you remember there’s nought so queer as folk.

24 people found this helpful

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Shocking, emotional, funny insight

I was expecting the job to be hard, but nothing like this. I hope this book can help change many perspectives on what a life of a doctor really is.
Great book, would definitely buy a part two even if it was the more mundane.

23 people found this helpful

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A must listen

A compelling book. Interesting, eye opening, funny, sad, awe inspiring and well presented in audiobook by the author. A must listen in my humble opinion.

20 people found this helpful

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Loved it

Should make all friends and family of medics listen to it. Cathartic, made me want to cry at times

17 people found this helpful

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Aptly named

I gave up. I can understand why he gave up medicine. This book might work better in a pub somewhere as a stand-up act. It's trite and offensive in tone and language. I can actually hear the condescending smirk on his face as he recounts tale after self-aggrandizing tale. He seems to value the brand of his underpants and socks more than people.

If you don't mind some cheap belly laughs at the expense of the dignity of his patients or co-workers, along with a good smattering of "f*cks" etc, then by all means give it a go.

16 people found this helpful

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  • siri
  • 29-08-19

Fun and honest about beeing a doctor

Beeing a medical doctor myself, I was exited about listening to this book. I found myself laughing and crying through the chapters. All the fun stories, the colourful personalities you meet in the hospital (both patients and staff), the fear of mistreating patients and all the extremely long and hard hours of work. It was so recognizable!

I live in Norway and I guess we have both better salary and work hours here, but doctors still work more than any other employee I can think of.

I started my internship married to a resident surgeon. My firstborn was only 1,5 years old at the time. I remember how I sometimes had to leave her with the nurses in the emergency departement because daycare closed and the shift of my husbond ended one hour after mine starded. I was so tired that I sometimes puked in the shower after beeing on dutey. I still feel that it is difficult resting on vacation; I feel that I have somehow lost the touch on how to relax. Still I love my job. It is the most interesting, rewarding and fullfilling job ever! :)

2 people found this helpful

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  • Needles
  • 23-08-18

Whine-fest.

I was expecting a little more of a story to be spun out of this, not literally a series of diary entries of a relentlessly whining and sarcastic tone.

1 person found this helpful

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  • Giveaman Amask
  • 17-06-18

Important and Funny

Mostly it's a lot of funny stories about being a doctor (in the UK), but underneath the funny stuff are some important, deeper stories.

Medicine may be the most admired career, and yet Adam Kay walked away from it. Why?
That's what this book is about. It's about him coming to terms with giving up something he put so much into, and really took over his life, or perhaps ruined his life. It's a cautionary tale, too, about bad government policies that take a situation where physicians will do heroic work for pennies, and wrecking this valuable part of British society.

I really loved this book. It made me want to have the author as a friend.

1 person found this helpful

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  • Anonymous User
  • 06-05-23

Laughter and tears

Oh how I laughed and how I cried; tears streamed down my face while on a run. People can carry the heaviest of burdens and endure so much.

This book contains the bread crumbs of Dr. Adams journey through medicine and the reasons why he left. The anecdotes are so vivid I could almost hear the babies screaming and it just proves that reality is stranger then fiction. I could try and retell all the stories, but that would be lame, get out there read this book; trust me. I've gained lots of respect for the profession.

Remember ask your doctor friends how their day is going!


Quotes
- "So I told them the truth: the hours are terrible, the pay is terrible, the conditions are terrible; you’re underappreciated, unsupported, disrespected and frequently physically endangered. But there’s no better job in the world."
- "the depth of the lows is the price you pay for the height of the highs."
- "I notice that every patient on the ward has a pulse of 60 recorded in their observation chart so I surreptitiously inspect the healthcare assistant’s measurement technique. He feels the patient’s pulse, looks at his watch and meticulously counts the number of seconds per minute."

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  • Anonymous User
  • 10-04-23

Easy listen

Wow, what a book. Watched the series straight after since I couldn't get enough. It's heartbreakingly hilarious. A collection of short diary entries which makes it an easy listen. I laughed, cried and laughed till I cried.

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  • Anonymous User
  • 03-03-23

Incredible

Thoroughly entertaining and yet gives you a renewed respect for health care workers. Definitely going to listen to it again and recommend it highly

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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  • Gudrun Lillekroken
  • 17-02-23

Performance could be better

I’d read the book (in German) so I was really excited for the audio in the original language. However the reading was too fast, too hectic. It worked when set to 0.9 speed, but now that I’ve started listening to Undoctored, I am realizing HOW MUCH BETTER the performance could have been. Adam Kay, I know redoing it would probably be a major drag, and that you are busy with new projects and all, but the book is totally worth a doing a new recording! Thank you from a Norwegian A&E nurse.

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  • Wattan Massalha
  • 03-02-23

Same shit

Dear Adam,
Thank you! I wish every patient of mine and every minester in the government of my country would read your book. It might make my life as a GP easier if they have a gram of empathy in their bones.
You made me laugh and get teary eyed along the way.
It is not just the NHS suffering and your government adding gasoline to the fire. Here too. same shit. while we as doctors suffer daily comes an idiot and wants to make more cuts in our pay. They just don't get it. I don't know if walking a path similar to yours in many ways made your book so close to heart and that it wouldn't hit home with someone who hasn't, but I think it might just make them know it is not as glamourous as they think.
Just so you know trainees in my country get your book as a present for passing the final exams from their employers; as if to say to them "it is going to hurt". And it does way too often. Thank you again xo

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  • Rose Gilbert
  • 04-10-22

A powerful story

Yikes,
I'm a nurse within another public healthcare setting very similar to the one in this book. Adam's personal approach shares the common every day reality of the life of a junior doctor in a comic yet raw way.
This audio book is read by Adam himself, lending a note of added authenticity to the tales.
When he begins to read the second to last chapter you could tell that this story on particular still hurts. You can hear the pain in his voice before he slips into a monotonous 'here are the facts' tone. As a healthcare professional, I too have stories that still bring me tears, days when work went horribly wrong.
Thank you Adam for sharing.

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  • Clive Hazell
  • 20-09-22

Laugh out loud funny

Not for the faint of heart or weak of constitution but this is a story of how ridiculous we all are and how laughter really is the best medicine