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This is Going to Hurt Adam Kay

This is Going to Hurt By Adam Kay

This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay


$13.69
Condition - Very Good
40+ in stock

Summary

A book rarely manages to be hilarious and horrifying in equal measures, yet this is something that Adam Kay can undoubtedly claim to have achieved. His heartbreaking, informative, and often laugh-out-loud account of his time working as a junior doctor for the NHS is both shocking and hysterical all at once.
Stephen Fry perfectly sums up the range of emotions one might feel when reading Kay's book. He describes it as, 'painfully funny. The pain and the funniness somehow add up to something entirely good, entirely noble, and entirely loveable.'

This is Going to Hurt Summary

This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay

This Is Going To Hurt pulls back the cubicle curtain to reveal what happens in the ward and beyond through a junior doctor's eyes. Get ready for 97-hour working weeks, understanding what it's like to have to make a fast decision that determines another human being's fate, a tidal wave of bodily fluids, and the rather bleak reality that after all that, you come away with a payslip that barely covers your outgoings.

This book isn't just about life on the medical front line; it is also a touching and painful reminder of what it means to be a human being with our fragile and often perplexing bodies, unique personalities, and amazing capacity to care for one another.

This critically acclaimed book remained as a Sunday Times Number One Bestseller for more than eight months and scooped up a whopping four National Book Awards. Kay is currently touring and has also written a second book, 'Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas'>

You should read this book if…

  • You want to discover the realities and secrets of what it's like to be an everyday hero of the NHS
  • You find bodily functions more amusing than outrageous
  • You want to learn, laugh, and be moved to tears at the same time

This is Going to Hurt Reviews

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
So clinically funny and politically important for supporters of the NHS that it should be given out on prescription * Guardian *
Painfully funny. The pain and the funniness somehow add up to something entirely good, entirely noble and entirely loveable. -- Stephen Fry
You will laugh, cry and be overwhelmed with gratitude for the medical profession who work so shockingly hard to patch us up and prolong our lives * Daily Express *
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
Blisteringly funny, politically enraging and often heartbreaking . . . hilarious . . . brimming not just with humour but with humanity . . . This should be a wake-up call to all who value the NHS -- Hannah Beckerman * Sunday Express *
A funny, excoriatingly revealing, beautiful book -- Dawn French
The humour is unflinching in its darkness . . . Yet I did laugh. A lot. Kay is a skilful, muscular writer, his narrative swinging from laugh-out- loud anecdotes to tales of sheer horror. The book's title is harrowingly apt . . . In the end, this book is a call to arms. That the NHS lost Kay is a tragedy. That this diary was written well before the Government's battle with junior doctors is more disturbing still * i *
Hilarious and heartbreaking . . . I howled, yelped and occasionally choked with laughter . . . It's an invigorating addition to the vogue for medical memoirs. I like to think of it sitting on a shelf next to Henry Marsh, Atul Gawande and Paul Kalanithi, turning the air bluer and bluer. It has something of all those writers, but with an added dash of a profane Adrian Mole . . . This book may hurt, but in an important and necessary way -- Cathy Rentzenbrink * The Times *
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
Hilarious from the first page - very, very funny. I loved it -- Kit Wharton, author of Emergency Admissions
This made me laugh out loud and cry in equal measures. Adam's book weaves in and out of his patients' lives and in so doing he tells, in a better narrative than I have ever seen before, of the pain and joy of working so close to despair, disease and death. It's a quite brilliant book and will soothe the sorrows of many junior (and senior) doctors and remind us all why we entered this wonderful profession. A must read for patients too - lifting the bonnet on the working life of your jobbing hospital doctor -- Prof Clare Gerada MBE, past chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners
An urgent, devastating yet truly funny account of life at the coalface of the NHS. This Is Going to Hurt had me laughing, crying and open-mouthed - in horror and in awe - by turn of page -- Lisa Owens, author of Not Working
Hilarious, poignant, depressing and shocking. Kay is such a brilliantly talented writer he manages to be both deadly serious and hilarious at the same time. Piles of this book should be in every GP surgery waiting room and A&E department in the country. Heartbreaking, dazzling, brutally honest -- Bridget Christie
Things I have done while reading this book: laughed aloud (too many times to count), read a passage to a stranger on a train (this was perhaps inadvisable but could not be helped), been consistently bowled over by the detail of Dr Kay's sharp prose & remarkably observant journey in a job so many of us have no real understanding of. It's an important book, a boots-on-the-ground memoir true to its title-but it's a good hurt I was left with upon turning the last page, the kind that resonates with empathy and consequence -- Ryan Gattis, author of Safe and All Involved
Stayed up half the night laughing out loud over painfully smart, honest doctor diaries -- Emma Donoghue, author of Room
Funny, tragic, uplifting and brimming with bodily fluids (sorry) . . . Kay makes for a compelling bedfellow as he explores the terrifying world of the amazing men and women (just about) holding the NHS together -- Francesca Brown * Stylist *
A heartening, laugh-out-loud confessional on the indignities and quiet joys of being a junior doctor . . . Anchoring the wisecracks is Kay's heartfelt respect for Britain's junior doctors and the ignoble realities of a noble profession. At a time of anxiety over the future of the NHS, Kay's warts-and-all account will not only bring plenty of laughs but also delivers a moving report from the NHS's embattled frontline' * Financial Times *
Hilarious . . . a complete eye-opener * Red *
Laugh-out-loud funny . . . I found myself laughing in horror over and over, but Kay's poignant final act brought me to tears. This is a valuable window into the life of a junior doctor that should be required reading for all -- Sarah Shaffi * Stylist *
This is a brilliant book -- Russell Howard
Brilliant -- Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
All of human life is contained in these diaries . . . hilarious, horrifying * Prima *
At once hilarious and shocking, moving and irreverent, This Is Going to Hurt is a book that demands to be read. Adam Kay's deft comic tone is a brilliant counterpoint to his most serious of intents: to impress upon us the importance of the NHS in our lives and the irreversible damage being inflicted upon it by indifferent governments. -- Maggie O'Farrell
Brutally funny . . . jaw-dropping * New Statesman *
Kay intersperses horror stories from the NHS front line with blissfully brilliant wordplay * Daily Mail *
Uniquely funny and unexpectedly heartbreaking -- Adam Hills
This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay is so clinically funny and politically important for supporters of the NHS that it should be given out on prescription. -- Mark Lawson * Guardian *
And This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay is not just laugh-out-loud funny, but precise, upsetting, and utterly sobering for anyone at all connected with the NHS. -- Jenny Colgan * Spectator *
Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor is a mirthful account of horrendous everyday events in an English hospital's 'brats and twats' (obstetrics and gynaecology) department, but also, with its 'Open Letter to the Secretary of State for Health', a poignant condemnation of the political exploitation of junior doctors. -- Graham Robb * Spectator *
We know that junior doctors have it rough. But it takes Kay's account of his 97-hour-week struggle to see just how rough. There are many hilariously gruesome anecdotes in this book. Some, such as the time "an extremely posh" patient arrives in the antenatal clinic, are just hilarious: "Her extremely posh eight-year-old asks her a question about the economy (!), and before she answers, she asks her extremely posh five-year-old, 'Do you know what the economy is, darling?' 'Yes, Mummy. It's the part of the plane that's terrible.' " -- Matt Rudd * The Times *
Hilariously gruesome anecdotes from a comedian and former junior doctor about working 97-hour weeks and life on the NHS frontline. * The Times, The 100 best books to read this summer *
What I like about this is it's not written by an old pro giving you his views after 30 years, but by a young man who faced all the problems of a modern NHS. Great fun, and a damn good read. -- Jeffrey Archer * Daily Mail *

About Adam Kay

Adam Kay is an award-winning comedian and writer for TV and film. He previously worked as a junior doctor, although you've probably worked that bit out already. He lives in west London.

Table of Contents

    • Introduction - i: Introduction
  • Chapter - 1: House Officer
  • Chapter - 2: Senior House Officer Post 1
  • Chapter - 3: Senior House Officer Post 2
  • Chapter - 4: Senior House Officer Post 3
  • Chapter - 5: Registrar Post 1
  • Chapter - 6: Registrar Post 2
  • Chapter - 7: Registrar Post 3
  • Chapter - 8: Registrar Post 4
  • Chapter - 9: Senior Registrar
  • Chapter - 10: Aftermath
    • Section - ii: An Open Letter to the Secretary of State for Health
    • Acknowledgements - iii: Acknowledgements

Additional information

GOR009054913
9781509858637
1509858636
This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay
Used - Very Good
Paperback
Pan Macmillan
2018-04-19
256
Winner of Blackwell's Debut of the Year 2017 (UK) Winner of Books are My Bag Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2017 (UK) Winner of Books are My Bag Readers Choice Award 2017 (UK) Winner of Big Book Awards: Biography Award 2018 (UK) Winner of National Book Awards New Writer of the Year 2018 (UK) Winner of National Book Awards Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2018 (UK) Winner of National Book Awards Zoe Ball Book Club Choice 2018 (UK) Winner of National Book Awards Book of the Year 2019 (UK) Short-listed for Blackwell's Book of the Year 2017 (UK) Short-listed for Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2018 (UK)
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - This is Going to Hurt