Scan barcode
A review by marianneiriss
Undoctored: The Story of a Medic Who Ran Out of Patients by Adam Kay
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
5.0
I sat down and read Undoctored over the course of one day. Having read This Is Going To Hurt and Twas The Nightshift Before Christmas, I was expecting another round of hilarious, albeit at times distasteful, anecdotes about life on the labour ward.
However, the further into Undoctored that I read, the more I realised that my expectations had been exceeded. This is definitely my favourite of Adam Kay's books so far - whilst I found the other two amusing, and as a medical student reading them is rather a rite of passage, there are only so many jokes about objects found in orifices that can be made before you start to expect the punchline. In contrast, Undoctored is much less about the patients, and much more about the doctor, something which made this a much more hard-hitting read than the light-hearted comedy I had expected.
In a series of flashbacks to medical school, life as a junior doctor, and excerpts from his life immediately after leaving medicine, Kay explores the culture of silence around mental health struggles and burnout, the normalisation of emotionally distancing oneself from patients, loved ones, and even your own emotions, and the issues surrounding medical recruitment and training. Alongside this, there are raw discussions about how Kay's own recovery from the toll medicine took on him, even after he left to become a writer. Discussing important and deeply personal subjects such as eating disorders and sexual assault in males and coming out as gay later in life, I though these chapters were particularly well-written: whilst by no means amusing in the same way as his previous books, Undoctored is a fantastic book which reveals the human behind both the stethoscope and the mic on stage.
However, the further into Undoctored that I read, the more I realised that my expectations had been exceeded. This is definitely my favourite of Adam Kay's books so far - whilst I found the other two amusing, and as a medical student reading them is rather a rite of passage, there are only so many jokes about objects found in orifices that can be made before you start to expect the punchline. In contrast, Undoctored is much less about the patients, and much more about the doctor, something which made this a much more hard-hitting read than the light-hearted comedy I had expected.
In a series of flashbacks to medical school, life as a junior doctor, and excerpts from his life immediately after leaving medicine, Kay explores the culture of silence around mental health struggles and burnout, the normalisation of emotionally distancing oneself from patients, loved ones, and even your own emotions, and the issues surrounding medical recruitment and training. Alongside this, there are raw discussions about how Kay's own recovery from the toll medicine took on him, even after he left to become a writer. Discussing important and deeply personal subjects such as eating disorders and sexual assault in males and coming out as gay later in life, I though these chapters were particularly well-written: whilst by no means amusing in the same way as his previous books, Undoctored is a fantastic book which reveals the human behind both the stethoscope and the mic on stage.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape, Eating disorder, and Sexual assault