Mama , here's my review of Adam Kay's book from when I read it (this old thread is worth a read www.mumsnet.com/Talk/what_were_reading/3163158-This-Is-Going-To-Hurt-by-Adam-Kay-I-urge-you-to-read-this). I was not a fan (and having seen him since writing a no-doubt highly paid medical column in the Sunday Times accompanied by a picture of himself wearing scrubs even though he is no longer a practising doctor just confirms my opinion that he's all about Adam Kay - sorry)
In Kay's defence, I guess he didn't set out to write the ultimate best-selling "state of the NHS book". It sounds like he was angry about the junior doctors' strike and the anti-medic smear campaign by the then Health Secretary, and thought it would be a good time to publish his diaries as an insight for laypeople into what it's really like to be a hospital doctor. Maybe if he'd known how widely it would sell he might have written it differently, who knows?
1. I wish there were more politics in it. The question of why the NHS has got into this mess, and what we do about it, touches on so many of the key issues that matter to people from all political persuasions. Perhaps, though, the fact that it's "funny" and not political is why it has been so popular, and maybe that's not a bad thing - getting those who "don't do politics" or who shudder at the sight of a picket line to consider why the doctors went on strike.
2. It's very me, me, me. This is entirely a book about what it's like to be a white, male, middle class, unmarried, childless doctor. Fair enough, it's a book from a doctor's perspective so he doesn't touch at all on what it's like for other NHS employees (those midwives that he works alongside for example) and only briefly on what it's like to be a patient in such a system. I found it less forgivable that he skirts around the issue a couple of times to the idea that some doctors will have it harder than others (the racist patient who abuses his colleagues, the enormous pressure of those trying to combine the ridiculous working hours with being a parent) but every time chooses not to go there. I wonder whether he ever had these thoughts but chose not to put them into the book, or if it just isn't something that he's ever thought about?
3. Yes, yes, black humour, coping mechanism etc. But still, there was a level of contempt in talking about many of his patients which I was very uncomfortable with. Time after time he talks about patients in vulnerable, frightening, humiliating positions, and very rarely does he recognise their fellow humanity. Maybe because he's in Obs and Gynae (and therefore safe in the knowledge that he will never be in that hospital bed himself), or maybe just because of his character, he sees those patients as "other", and the shitty attitude shown in the links posted here doesn't surprise me.
4. Just generally not funny. Tried too hard with the humour and mostly fell flat.
All of that said, like PP I felt that the handling of the incident that caused him finally to leave medicine was done well - I felt only sympathy with him over this and the way it made him feel.