Reviews with content warning for Death - This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor

I wanted to read this book because I love Adam Kay’s style of writing and how brutal he can be but how brutal he needs to be. This book was no different, but it was fully enjoyable and heartbreaking at the same time.

This is about Adam’s career in the NHS. He started out a junior doctor where his life was 97-hour work weeks, life and death decisions, a constant tsunami of bodily fluids and the hospital parking meter making more than a junior doctor does. Adam’s diary entries are written in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekend. This book provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. It is hilarious and heartbreaking. You ever want to know how a junior doctor must deal with? Read this book.

With this obviously being before COVID and being set in the UK with the NHS, you know what he means when you joke but then he is also discusses some serious issues like if you want to go private and how much it would cost to have a baby if the NHS was privatised. Also, as someone who doesn’t want children, this book just fully reiterated that I never want children with the horrors that Adam talked about. This book gives you funny titbits and sad stories whilst Adam is talking about the things that are going on in his life.

Through the whole book, I just wanted to hug Adam and his patients that he renamed to their initials or for his personal friends and family, Harry Potter Characters. As with the Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas, I wanted it longer.

I cannot wait to read Undoctored next, and it will probably break my heart again.

Content Warnings