To think This Is Going To Hurt is awful to women?

[justanoldhack]

Watching the show and can't help but shake a really uncomfortable feeling that its writer just...really doesn't like women.

I get that doctors are super overstretched, so tired, giving the job everything at the expense of their personal lives. I also get that it's a 'comedy' and not real, although it is based on his true life experiences.

But the way the women are portrayed as silly, a nuisance, stupid, battleaxes, or simply a vessel that 'covers his pubes in blood'... feels so off. These are women at one of the most vulnerable moments in their lives, but they're just props, the butt of the jokes. I can't shake the feeling that Adam Kay really, really doesn't like women. Definitely does not respect them.

Thanks goodness, I guess, that he's not longer practicing medicine. And not surprised either to learn that when he was younger he wrote 'comedy' songs about babies with Down's Syndrome and women from the North.

[quote coffeepopcorn]Do complain to the BBC about the unacceptable offensive misogyny in this programme. I have. They need to know that women are not impressed by this.

www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/[/quote]
Speak for yourself. I’ve really enjoyed it. It shows how broke maternity care was and is in the NHS

@XingMing that would be one way to cope, yet this is a thread mainly full of people saying medical professionals need to be empathetic compassionate people who connect with patients on a personal level.

What we want from healthcare professionals is not possible for the majority in the present system.

@AnnaMagnani

A very interesting and enlightening perspective. Thanks for sharing.

I disagree that he takes human suffering and turns it into entertainment. He shows great concern for the older, rather cantankerous woman who is lonely without any visitors and there are no laughs levelled at the woman in an abusive relationship for example.

Yes, he pokes fun at the patient who wants to eat her placenta and the woman who, when asked how many weeks she is, calculates her own age in weeks. But the big stories are there too, to show us what medical professionals have to deal with, the weight of it all.

And he doesn't shy away from criticising himself either. He is a dick to Shruti but she proves to be wonderful.

Thanks @Cbtb

My mum was a nurse, I'd been an HCA, I didn't think I was THAT sheltered.

But actually I was an 18 year old from a naice all girls selective school. In my first job I was sent to see a man who had shoved his daughter's care bear toy up his arse. He spent his time telling me his wife didn't understand him.

Nowadays that would be seen as Safeguarding. In 1999, it was seen as a funny anecdote, nobody thought about his daughter, and certainly nobody thought about me, the 23 yr old female the team set up to go and clerk the guy with a child's toy up his arse.

All of us junior doctors were going through multiple traumas, every shift - once we sat down and worked out when we had last had some positive feedback. For some of us it had been over a year.

It's a miracle any of us stayed in the job at all.

If anyone hasn’t read his book, there’s a free pdf online of it.

I really don’t understand this view. I’ve read the book and I’ve seen the series and I jeep seeing this opinion and I didn’t get that from it at all.

I honestly believe you been a dark sense of humour to work in that role, it helps you from being too affected by what you see day in day out. A man that didn’t care wouldn’t be so affected by a case where he made the wrong decision as much as he is with the pre eclamptic 25 weeker. The older lady with the Vuval cancer he cares for and goes that extra mile to ensure she’s comfortable, there was no misogyny in my eyes just a dark sense of humour that helps him get through the day.

I think it’s inhumane, the training for doctors and how many end up treating women and every patient, pretty much. Of course that this kind of chronic sleep deprivation and trauma exposure is harmful and will affect how they work and how much empathy they have left for patients. I’m not excusing it because my life is in tatters in big part due to not being listened to or diagnosed properly or treated. I treat myself for the last decade and have to buy expensive illegal antibiotics and sleeping pills to just survive.

There’s a report from Baroness Cumberlege about women’s treatment: First Do No Harm

There’s a great study on pubmed, the history of Hysteria (through the ages)

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480686/

Women And Hysteria In The History Of Mental Health

I don’t understand why doctors have to not sleep and do 46547 hour shifts, since many many people want to be doctors and there are limits on how many are allowed to qualify in this country. I know of a british lady who had to go study medicine in Romania even though she had the required grades, there weren’t enough ‘spaces’ to study. Isn’t this a false economy, to have less doctors to save money? A lot of how the nhs seems to function is false economy.

I haven't watched it but I thought the adverts for it were misogynistic so I probably won't end up watching the series.

I do get that gallows humour is a coping mechanism - but no way would any other public servant get away with comments and such that have been detailed on this thread. Do we think the cops at Charing X were fine to use the language they did because they were no doubt overworked/underfunded/ traumatised? No of course not. Even though it appears to have been a private what's app group not available to the public.

I do think we deify the NHS in this country and that contributes to the entitlement that some (mainly male) medics develop.

And I do think a programme with another protected minority as the main butt of the jokes wouldn't be aired on the BBC. Something similar about ethnic minorities would just not be made.

www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/04/women-more-likely-die-operation-male-surgeon-study

Also this, it is misogyny, and similar to racism in that black patients have better outcomes from black doctors and nurses.

@AutomaticMoon

Things have got better with shift length in the last 20 years

The reason for not enough students are complex:

1. The government doesn't want to pay for more medical students
2. There are not enough hospital spaces for students - patients don’t want students especially in obs and Gynae - there was a recent thread on here where the consensus seemed to be that medical students shouldn’t have obs and Gynae experience and it should be post grad only
3. Qualified doctors are so busy with work they can’t spare the time to train more students (catch 22 this, train less = more work in the long run)
4. The medical unions have lobbied hard for Medical school places to be capped at the number of foundation programme jobs (this isn’t the unions not wanting more doctors so they earn more as it’s often portrayed but that so all uk medical school grads can get a pre-reg foundation year job as in most counties this year would be part of medical school. It’s only after this year you become fully registered with the GMC and can seek other employment. Medical unions would support an increase in medical school places as long as foundation places are also increased otherwise you don’t get more “proper” doctors for your increased money.

Other than foundation there are shortages right across the medical fields. Hours are in theory limited but we are volun-told to opt out of the WTD. You might be down to work a 12 hour shift but when the next slot is vacant you end up staying because there is no one to hand over to.

The reduction in working hours has meant we now do “full shift”. These rotate between days, nights and lates. Hospitals want the most work they can squeeze from each dr so instead of designing rota patterns that go from days to lates to nights and then time off you get insane shifts that switch from day to night and back again without rests. You end up permanently jet lagged. You feel like you do in that newborn stage when you are just so bone tired everything’s hazy.

Some tiny specialities like psychiatry and neurosurgery are just so short staffed that there are simply not enough qualified doctors in these areas to staff the On calls without people being on for 72hrs at a time.

Junior doctors are not allocated admin time- so you are scheduled to see patients from 8-6 in a normal day but that does not include time to write letters to patients and check notes and audit your practice or have meetings with your mentors or clinical meetings about department improvements etc or teach students. All that is done in your own time before or after work or on your days off.

You are also advised by the royal colleges in order to pass the exams for the next stage of training you should be putting in 2hrs study per day after work (what i should be doing now) as junior doctor jobs are all about keeping the service afloat - there is no time for training.

Back in the “good ol’ days hours may have been longer but doctors could live on site and get meals provided etx. They were generally male and single without kids. If they did get married the salary would support a wife who could run the home for them. Now we move hospital every 4-6months and are told that 1.5hr commutes each way are to be expected and we cook and clean and look after our kids like everyone else.

I don't know anything about the book or the author but I'm really enjoying the TV series. They're not celebrating the protagonist or his behaviour at all. It's clear he's a broken, damaged man whose fucking up.

I lived on site - a diet that consists solely of sausages and chips is not a healthy diet and has left me with lifelong obesity. However we did support each other as fellow juniors which has now been lost.

A life of moving every 6 months isn't appealing so while I did genuinely want to do my specialty, the fact I wouldn't have to do nights or weekends was definitely part of the appeal.

And along the way I failed to have the relationship or the kids. So you could says that was another sacrifice for medicine.

By the time I was able to have a chance to date - as a consultant - it was basically too late for kids. And I didn't want to have children I didn't see. So that was that.

It's a career that it is still highly misogynistic to it's staff and has a long way to go.

It didn't show women in a bad light. It showed how the weight of a hugely underfunded and undervalued institution destroyed a young woman. My heart broke for Shruti. Adam was jaded, burnt out, exhausted. The person I really couldn't stand was the female consultant Houghton, who was disdainful and unprofessional even at the wake. How the hell doctors make it out alive is beyond me.

Yes, the humour was black. I'm sure we've all had similar internal monologues when coming across people. Ultimately, every character was flawed. I mean, singing songs about downs is beyond the pale but leaving that aside, the programme on its own laid bare an utterly desperate scene.

I have read the book, and didn't particularly enjoy it. I think it's supposed to be funny, but it wasn't for me. I did spend most of it wondering why he'd bothered to be a doctor when he appeared to have nothing but disdain for the majority of his patients. I don't think I'll read or watch anything else he's done.

I have a close family member who is a doctor and the way he and his friends talk about women is absolutely grim. One of his friends is an anaesthetist and one of his most ‘hilarious’ stories is about a very fat woman. Once she was anaesthetised they all took turns wobbling her fat stomach. Another time they mocked a woman’s pubic hair.

Do not be fooled into believing that your male doctor has an ounce of respect for you as a woman. Some of them might, but there are plenty of them who are laughing at us and turning us into anecdotes for their misogynistic friends.

@Appletreechocolatecake

I have a close family member who is a doctor and the way he and his friends talk about women is absolutely grim. One of his friends is an anaesthetist and one of his most ‘hilarious’ stories is about a very fat woman. Once she was anaesthetised they all took turns wobbling her fat stomach. Another time they mocked a woman’s pubic hair.

Do not be fooled into believing that your male doctor has an ounce of respect for you as a woman. Some of them might, but there are plenty of them who are laughing at us and turning us into anecdotes for their misogynistic friends.

Does your doctor family member only talk about women, never men? That's really weird.

Regardless, disgusting to touch an unconscious patient for the purpose of mockery and humiliation.

I feel it's different to laugh at something daft a patient has said or done - as a pp said, who hasn't had an inner monologue about a customer or client - but your anecdote is truly awful. How can you bear to be around that family member? How could he possibly think that was a story people would find amusing?

I liked it!
And of course there’s a degree of depersonalisation in aN NHS health setting, I mean there are just SO MANY people to see. And the aim of delivering in hospital is for both mother and baby to get out healthy and alive. Feeling cherished and nurtured and supported and respected are secondary to that that when you’re using a busy state funded service. I almost shelled out 25k for a private c section a few months ago. I decided to use the NHS at the last minute and no, not everyone was lovely, and yes, there were times I felt as if I was just a (quite irritating) number to them. In fact there were times I felt totally invisible. But I’m beyond grateful to have my lovely baby out, with my 25k still in the bank!

He's always been the same- the desperate attempt to hide various songs that are now not seen as suitable, when they never were, and the misogynistic tone to the writing. I always thought he came across as a bit of an arse, and never got the huge appeal.

YANBU at all. I read the books a couple of years ago and found that although the unrelenting pressure of the NHS must be difficult for staff, there was a real lack of respect for patients. In particular, there’s a description of a termination in the Christmas book that really doesn’t sit well with me - it’s unnecessarily graphic and he writes it as if it’s more traumatic for him than for the patient.

I found the TV series a bit more nuanced in some respects, particularly Shruti and Tracey’s characters, and it’s clear that he’s not meant to be a likeable person. But still, the lack of empathy and respect for women was really jarring. I had a premature baby due to placental abruption and I’m so glad that my care didn’t resemble what was portrayed on screen.

I've just finished watching the series.

I don't care whether Adam Kay is a misogynist or not. As far as I'm concerned he's written the most powerful cry for help to save the NHS I've ever seen. It makes me so angry that politicians have allowed it to get in this state and I've nothing but sympathy for those who sacrifice so much to work in it.

That's what it's about. Not everything is a feminist issue. I hope that people are not put off from watching it by posters who are determined to make it one. It's more important than that. Particularly now, when the NHS is struggling to cope with the backlog with a burnt-out workforce, depleted numbers and empty coffers, everybody should watch this series.

@Appletreechocolatecake

I have a close family member who is a doctor and the way he and his friends talk about women is absolutely grim. One of his friends is an anaesthetist and one of his most ‘hilarious’ stories is about a very fat woman. Once she was anaesthetised they all took turns wobbling her fat stomach. Another time they mocked a woman’s pubic hair.

Do not be fooled into believing that your male doctor has an ounce of respect for you as a woman. Some of them might, but there are plenty of them who are laughing at us and turning us into anecdotes for their misogynistic friends.

I made the mistake of reading a surgeon forum thread about pelvic exams while under anaesthesia without consent and the entitlement is astounding. cPTSD makes you hate people so I wonder if that’s what they all have.

I was already paranoid (I also have cPTSD) about going under anaesthesia and this really didn’t help.