کتاب This Is Going to Hurt

This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor is a nonfiction book by the British comedy writer Adam Kay, published in 2017 by Picador. It is a collection of diary entries written by Kay during his medical training from 2004 to 2010. Kay's book discusses political issues in the health care system of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom and societal conflicts between the general population and neglected doctors. Kay accomplishes this by incorporating humour into his personal anecdotes that depict his life as he progresses through his medical training, and his eventual resignation from this career.

This is Going to Hurt is mostly composed of diary entries Adam Kay wrote during his medical training under the National Health Service. It was recommended to Kay to write this diary as a "reflective practice" in which he could log any interesting clinical experiences he experienced throughout his training. Five years after his resignation, Kay was officially removed from the medical register which prompted him to dispose of all the medical files he had been storing, leading him to review his reflective journal. Around this time in 2015, junior doctors entered contract disputes with the NHS leading the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Jeremy Hunt, to accuse junior doctors of being greedy. This event motivated Kay to respond to this accusation by releasing This is Going to Hurt, which illustrates his own experiences as a junior doctor.

The most prevalent theme present in This is Going to Hurt is the mistreatment and neglect that doctors have to endure. Throughout his time working for the NHS, Adam Kay was deprived of multiple basic amenities that other occupations have. Kay was forced to stay hours after his shift would end with no pay, be unable to have a sick day or go on holiday because it was extremely difficult to find someone to cover his shift; while on shift, he would be unable to sleep even if he had free time; and, in general, junior doctors like Kay felt severely underpaid for their services. This sense of neglect was emphasised after Kay's career-ending event since he wasn't allowed to take any time off to emotionally recover. The next day he was forced to go back to work even though he wasn't in the right mindset to and had asked for a week off. No therapy was offered to Kay to possibly help him after the traumatic event, further debilitating his emotions and mind.

The traumatic event emphasises another theme present which involves the humanising of doctors. In This is Going to Hurt Kay discusses how the general public expects doctors to be more than human. They expect doctors to be available at all times at their full efficiency, disregarding the fact that they are also humans. Kay claims that people forget doctors also have to spend time with their families and friends, they have to sleep, eat and take care of themselves, and more importantly they expect doctors to be error-free. Doctors' fallibility is unavoidable since they are human and are always prone to making mistakes. Not only did Kay make a mistake by missing the diagnosis of placenta praevia, but he had previously slightly cut the cheek of a newborn baby during a caesarean, mainly due to lack of sleep during his night shift.

These main themes combine and form a response to Jeremy Hunt's comments concerning the true intentions of doctors. These themes in This is Going to Hurt justify that doctors like Kay are not greedy and don't pursue a career in medicine for the money. Through this book Kay demonstrates the many adversities junior doctors must face for the minimal pay they receive. By publishing the book, Kay sought to spread awareness of the difficulties doctors faced that justified them entering contract disputes with the NHS