This Is Going to Hurt

[Wouldloveanother]

I read this book a while ago but just re-skimmed it while bedridden with pregnancy sickness. I’d forgotten how funny it is, although the ending is tragic and poignant. I thought it gave a really good insight into the pressures on maternity staff and why it’s not always realistic for us to have the exact care we want in labour. I think it’s a shame he left medicine, but can see how he lost his nerve and didn’t feel able to go back. Anyone else read it?

I was an HCP in a former life and I found elements of both Bodies and TIGTH so accurate it was painful to watch.

She didn’t say it’s not misogynistic because she enjoyed it though did she? 🙄

Well Bodies and TIGTH being ‘accurate’ is all the more reason to say ‘wow these attitudes towards women are shameful, they show misogyny is still alive and well in women’s healthcare and this gross disrespect, attitudes and culture needs to die’

The student doctor was invented for the TV series. That never actually happened. You are free to dislike him, of course, but your opinion is more credible if you dislike him for things he actually did. 🤦‍♀️ Perhaps read his book before voicing your opinions.

I love his books. Haven’t seen the series yet.

No it’s all the more reason to say doctors are overworked and we should be looking after them
more.

Gosh, read the book AND watch the whole series before deciding the man should be cancelled/burnt at the stake/etc... What sensible, open minded shiz is this?

The book and to a greater extent, the TV series, is NOT a detailed and accurate account of exactly what happened with various patients - that would be identifiable and he'd get sued.

It is obvious (well to anyone with half a brain) that these stories are manufactured from various events across several years, tweaked and pulled, added to and in some cases, invented to cover a topic (medical student suicide) that needed highlighting.

Are there lots of stories that paint women in a negative light - well he worked in Obs and Gynae so that does stack the odds somewhat!

As for the Amateur Transplants songs - wheres the flack for Suman Biswas who is still in medicine?

I thought (as a fat northern bird!) they were hysterically funny and outrageously offensive at the time - but then we're talking almost 20 years ago, I thought a lot of stuff was funny/clever/brilliant that in hindsight wasn't so great. Now I think they're a rather ill thought out reaction to the pressures of being a medical student and crashing into a world full of pretty horrific things, surrounded by people experiencing the same, plus large quantities of alcohol and not enough sleep.

But this is mumsnet so obviously the majority here have never made poor decisions in their early adulthood.

You can simultaneously think drs and healthcare staff need better working conditions whilst also acknowledging nasty misogynistic attitudes and culture pervading women’s healthcare

@Wouldloveanother

y r u being so weird op

it’s like your Adam Kay’s PR manager or something

😆

Oh ffs! My dh has been a Doctor for about 27 years now. Yes it’s shit in the NHS, well particularly since the austerity years. It’s always been fucking hard work, but yes workloads have been getting bigger and are now totally unsustainable. But (and it’s an enormous But), Dh would say there is no excuse for talking in a demeaning and disrespectful way about patients. His mantra is no matter how bad things are getting “don’t blame the patients”.

And no he’s not trying to be a saint, just a professional.

@MissyB1 When did Adam Kay ever blame the patients for the state of the NHS or the pressures that junior doctors are put under? I don’t remember him ever doing this but it has been a while since I read the book.

It's strange how the op is suggesting we should nobly respond with compassion and care to our overworked doctors because they obviously need it on the basis that they wouldn't behave like pricks if they weren't crippled by fatigue.

There are other responses available to them.

There are other reasons why they may be behaving in a toxic fashion.

I have a friend whose boss gave him the finger when he was signed off work with a very serious acute illness. Standard behaviour. What was the boss? An NHS consultant. What was my friend? A lowly junior doctor. Did the consultant have to be a prat? Of course not. Would he have felt able to do it if his pay and job security relied on behaving like a decent human being? Absolutely not. We would probably have found he could restrain himself. But there's no correlation for him so toxicity can flourish from the top down with patients at the bottom of the pile.

The dark side of feeling like a victim or indeed a benevolent narcissist is that you feel able to kick others with impunity because you're such a heroic martyr. That's not a million miles away from the attitudes flourishing in the NHS. There are better ways to respond to stress but you have to be incentivised to respect other people's boundaries. Adam Kay is normalising doctors behaving appallingly under the guise of humour. He is doing nothing for the profession and may be actively harmful if vulnerable women take his approach as something they have to accept being subjected to in order to access medical care. It's not ok. He makes women out to be dirty and contemptible. No, he doesn't want them to physically die but his attitude would rot the soul of any woman subjected to it for too long. I pity any woman (and I'm sure they're out there) who has the misfortune to recognise themselves and their case notes in his stories. They deserve better.

But I don’t think he is a prick. I think he’s just a regular guy with a dark sense of humour, highlighting the failings of the NHS using his own experience and anecdotes. There’s no reason to believe he is a misogynist, it just seems to be the go-to insult on Mn for any man that posters don’t like.

He's a regular guy with access to very vulnerable women in a position of responsibility. Those stories belong to the patients.

I’m talking about posters insinuating that the stress of the job made Adam Kay talk about patients in derogatory terms. No! The job is bloody stressful but that doesn’t mean you can take it out on patients by talking about them so disrespectfully.

How can a medic talk about their experiences without mentioning patients? He hasn’t identified anyone. Does his experience of being a doctor not belong to him? You may not like his attitude or humour but you can’t say he doesn’t have the right to write about his own experiences from his own point of view.

But he didn’t “take it out on” the patients. He wrote down his observations, opinions and experiences as a way to cope with the stress he was under. It was his way of working through it all. At the time he did so privately so it would have had no impact on his patients at all.

alwaysdarkestbeforedawn

Maybe he can't talk about these things in the way that he does. He talks often about one very specific set of circumstances that absolutely do not belong to him too the extent that he should be able to put them in the public domain. There would be issues if a teacher did it. In fact a teacher has recently had her book taken off the shelves for a great deal less.

Also, there's sharing your experiences and making fun of the people you're being paid to treat for professional gain. I don't think they're the same thing.

I loved it. But I'm glad I read it AFTER I'd given birth to my boys. The ending is so tragic.

Well I’m glad there is a call for attitude changes in women’s healthcare. I’ve seen more drive for change regarding the fact 4x more black women die in childbirth, which many believe is partly due to institutional racism in the NHS.

Adam Kay was a privileged white privately-educated schoolboy from a well-off background when he joined medical school, he likely already had a lot of his misogynistic attitudes deeply ingrained before setting foot on the ward, then the misogynistic paternal environment of labour ward just escalated it. But I have seen more and more push for change and challenging of the attitudes displayed in his book. I’ve also seen more and more criticism of his book as the years have gone on, so hopefully these attitudes will one day be firmly in the past.

@Butterdishtea Well without knowing which specific circumstances you are referring to, or which teacher, I can’t really comment further. Which is probably a good thing because it’s late and I have my own patients to (respectfully) see in the morning. Goodnight.

Good to know you won't be writing a lucrative about their highly personal experiences and bodies, calling them hags, implying they're disgusting and then claiming you're entitled to do so because you were tired and not sufficiently well paid :)

@Butterdishtea Whatever your opinion of his writing or of him as a person, his commentary on the pressures faced by those in the medical profession are valid. Please don’t try to trivialise that.

Yes and he often used derogatory language about his patients in those observations. Stop saying that’s an acceptable way to cope with stress. My dh left for work at the hospital today at 6:30am , he will have a day of hell. The hospital is imploding basically. He will not slag his patients off and talk about them using disgusting terms, despite being stressed, exhausted, and probably feeling quite down.