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This is Going to Hurt

The Bestselling Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor

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This is Going to Hurt

By: Adam Kay
Narrated by: Adam Kay
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About this listen

Read by the author, Adam Kay.

The multi-million copy bestseller
Book of the Year at The National Book Awards

‘Painfully funny. The pain and the funniness somehow add up to something entirely good, entirely noble and entirely loveable.' - Stephen Fry

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 Bestseller for over eight months and winner of a record FOUR National Book Awards: Book of the Year, Non-Fiction Book of the Year, New Writer of the Year and Zoe Ball Book Club Book of the Year.

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

 Education & Training Medical Medicine & Health Care Industry Professionals & Academics Funny Witty Inspiring Thought-Provoking Heartfelt Comedy Feel-Good Health Care

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Critic reviews

Painfully funny. The pain and the funniness somehow add up to something entirely good, entirely noble and entirely loveable. (Stephen Fry)
I'm not a Doctor (despite what I sometimes say) but I’d prescribe this book to anyone and everyone. It's laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreakingly sad and gives you the lowdown on what it’s like to be holding it together while serving on the front line of our beloved but beleaguered NHS. It’s wonderful (Jonathan Ross)
Finally a true picture of the harrowing, hilarious and ultimately chaotic life of the junior doctor in all its gory glory, dark comedy and unavoidable sadness. A blisteringly funny account shot through with harrowing detail, many pertinent truths and the humanity we all hope doctors conceal behind their unflappable exteriors. (Jo Brand)
As hilarious as it is heartbreaking – and it IS heartbreaking (also hilarious) (Charlie Brooker)
Unputdownable. You must read this book if you like reading, like laughing or love our NHS. It’s a spit-your-tea-out-laughing clarion call to stand up for our junior doctors with all our might (Shappi Khorsandi)
What an amazing book. I laughed so hard and often I nearly choked, but it’s also very moving and important. Everyone should read it. (Cathy Rentzenbrink)
By turns hilarious, shocking, heartbreaking and humbling (John Niven)
Much like the NHS itself, this book is filled with hope, despair, miracles, catastrophe and acres of the sharpest gallows humour. A very funny book with a very sobering message (Chris Addison)
Horrifyingly hilarious and hilariously horrifying (Danny Wallace)
This is a ferociously funny book, but beneath the sheen of brilliant one-liners is a passionate, acutely personal examination of what the health service does for us, and what we're in danger of doing to it (Mark Watson)
As a hypochondriac I was worried about reading Adam Kay’s book. Luckily it’s incredibly funny – so funny, in fact, that it gave me a hernia from laughing (Joe Lycett)
A scurrilously funny, poignant and fascinatingly horrific tale of being torn to pieces and spat out by the strangely loveable but graceless monster that is the NHS (Milton Jones)
If we lose the NHS, Adam Kay’s diary of his him as a junior doctor will become a historical record of a unique, empathy-powered machine, and make it not just one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, but one of the saddest, too (David Whitehouse)
What a hilarious, stomach-churning, thought-provoking heartbreaker of a book. I loved every single page (Jill Mansell)
Superb. Unusual and funny and sad (Pam Ayres)
By turns witty, gruesome, alarming, and touching. Always illuminating and searingly honest (Jonathan Dimbleby)
This should be required reading for anyone who works in, uses or even voices an opinion about the NHS. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll laugh some more, you’ll think twice about ever reproducing (Dean Burnett, author of The Idiot Brain)
All stars
Most relevant
Hilarious and crushingly poignant. Well worth a listen by medical students, doctors and everyone else

Amazing

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So interesting to hear the real nitty gritty details about the life as a junior doctor. It was very well written; hilarious throughout, but littered with sad and poignant moments that clearly stayed with the author. The author is also the narrator. He leads you through the NHS minefield he traveled through, which allowed him to become a life saving, baby delivering, object-in-orifice removing doctor. He demolishes the convenient public image Jeremy Hunt wants to paint of a finely oiled machine being ruined by greedy doctors, with pragmatism and common sense very early on. Highlighting many flaws in how things are done.
One of the most thought provoking and striking things about this book is how grossly overworked, woefully underpaid and severely underappreciated he and that of his peers are, that frankly their treatment boarders on abuse (and that was 6 years ago). Most people would never settle for their employer treating them this way, yet junior doctors have very little choice and an even smaller chance to petition for change. It also highlights just how much junior doctors sacrifice in their own lives for the sake of their patients. Our NHS is literally running on overwhelming compassion and selflessness.
Thank you Adam Kay for trying to open the eyes of the health secretary, and for making me laugh whilst doing it.

Loved my first audio book! Highly recommend.

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Really makes a non-medic begin to realise how hard it is in the NHS. Adam puts himself across really well and he is a funny guy with great timing. A perfect blend of humour and morality but ends with a great focus on the problems affecting NHS workers. I will definitely go out of my way to be kinder to those workers in future. And to think, I only got this book because I had a free trial with audible.

So funny and harrowing at the same time.

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I loved this book. It made me laugh, gasp, and occasionally brought me close to tears with some of its more heartbreaking moments. It shines a light on the plight of the NHS and the horrendous expectations placed on its staff in recent years, but Adam Kay never comes across as preachy or pessimistic. The audio book narration is fantastic too, not only is Kay an entertaining writer, he narrates in a style that captures the dry wit of the book perfectly.

Hilarious, poignant, and occasionally traumatising

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Moving from laugh out-loud funny one minute, to sad and poignant the next, this book gives a heartwarming but realistic viewpoint on life in the NHS... a sometimes graphic, near the knuckle account of one man’s incredible journey - the amazing highs, the dreadful lows and a heart-wrenching desperately sad climax that’s guaranteed to reduce you to tears, it’s an emotional rollercoaster of a book.

A must read...

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