read by Adam Kay
Adam Kay has given so many interviews and there have been so
many prominent reviews of This is Goingto Hurt that a lot of the best jokes and funny episodes have already been aired
many times. But don’t let that put you off. Medical students have always told
tall tales and usually have a swollen list of anecdotes about their colleagues
and patients. Medical black humour is as old as the medical profession itself – and the tooth-pulling, grave-robbing,
elixir-pushing mountebanks who preceded them.
At book signings (at which, alas, full recommended price is
usually a given), apparently, many a copy of This is Going to Hurt is destined for the (at the time of going to
press, as the saying goes) Secretary of State for Health (and Social Care)
Jeremy Hunt (he of a privatised NHS fame). Kay has famously shrugged off his
medical calling and opted instead for writing and comedy. And if you listen to
this audiobook you will find out precisely why.
The tall tales are good (especially as they are narrated by
the author). The funny things people do to themselves are, well, excruciatingly
funny also. However, the repeated sacrifices of a doctor’s life are saddening
and the consequences of underfunding, under resourcing and overworking are
chastening.
In the end, despite the jokes that are somehow not jokes at
all (‘home delivery is for pizzas not babies’) and the jokes that are, one
hopes, jokes (‘the undergraduate learning centre’ being known as the ‘early
learning centre’), this is a deepfelt cry for attention from a professional who
couldn’t carry on given the shameful and shocking demands on junior doctors of
a health service in crisis.
Shame on all of us to allow this to be.
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