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Near Fine in Very Good dust jacket. 0316426725. Light creasing to d/j. A Good Read ships from Toronto and Niagara Falls, NY-customers outside of North America please allow two to three weeks for delivery.; 6.4 X 1.25 X 9.6 inches; 288 pages.
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Lauren Burke (Jacket Art) and Idil Sukan (Author P. Very good in Very good jacket. [10], 278 pages. Footnotes. DJ has minor wear and soiling. Adam Richard Kay (born 12 June 1980) is a British BAFTA-winning TV writer, author, comedian and former doctor. His television writing credits include This is Going to Hurt (TV series), Crims, Mrs. Brown's Boys and Mitchell and Webb. He is best known as author of the number-one bestselling book This Is Going to Hurt. Kay worked as a doctor between 2004 and 2010, leaving the profession after a patient's caesarean section was complicated by an undiagnosed placenta praevia; the expectant mother was subsequently taken to the intensive care unit, while the baby was delivered stillborn, which left him with symptoms of PTSD. Kay worked for a number of years as an obstetrics and gynaecology junior doctor, writing textbooks on the subject, before leaving medicine for a career in writing. Kay's first book, This Is Going to Hurt, based on diaries from his former career as a doctor, was published by Picador in September 2017 and became a Sunday Times bestseller. The paperback edition was also a Sunday Times number one bestseller, a position it held for well over a year. It was the book of the year in the UK's 2018 National Book Awards. The book was well received by critics, including in the literary pages of The Times, Financial Times, Guardian, and The Scotsman. Bestselling author Adam Kay channels Henry Marsh and David Sedaris to tell us the hilarious--and sometimes horrifying--truth about life and work in a hospital. Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave goodbye to your friends and relationships. Welcome to the life of a first-year doctor. Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, comedian and former junior doctor Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the front lines of medicine. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking by turns, this is everything you wanted to know--and more than a few things you didn't--about life on and off the hospital ward. And yes, it may leave a scar. 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 emphasized 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 was not 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...
Horrifying doesn't begin to describe many of the author's experiences and actions in this book! As a comedy writer for tv, he is very good at telling a story in a funny way. However most of the stories also include gory descriptions, profanity (including taking the Lord's name in vain), or a lack of concern for the feelings of patients and even so called friends.
After reading this book, I wonder how much is manufactured or changed for entertainment value. He seems prone to exaggerate. Remember, Adam Kay now writes comedy for television. I doubt he kept a faithful diary because of the general lack of time for ordinary life and complete exhaustion he mentions.
*Anyone who knows the rarely used (by moms in the natural birth community) term placentophagia is also sure to know what a placenta looks like and that placentas are generally dried and encapsulated NOT eaten raw like a lioness no matter how humorous it may seem.
Adam describes the whole experience as "perversely exhilarating" which feels like this was a bit of a narcissistic power trip. Interestingly he shows us the foibles of other medical staff in questionable integrity but his honesty is nearly always above reproach. There is the episode where he hypothetically talks about a humiliating passive aggressive surgical act he could have done in regards to a patient but claims to have not followed through with as it could lead to potential litigation. This "funny" situation places him as a potential 'social justice hero'. Frankly, an intolerant passive-aggressive doctor is frightening!
One of the job non-benefits that surprised Adam Kay was frequent over time that strained personal relationships. He complains about total fatigue and uncompensated work hours throughout the book because of understaffed hospitals. He says they don't even have time to eat or take breaks most of the time. Very dangerous to have over tired medical personnel!
Perhaps you might say we need to hire more doctors. Forbes has suggestions (link) for fixing medical schools and through this improving the medical system. The most notable suggestion is to stop incentivizing medical schools and students to focus more on specialty practice over general medicine. Yet it isn't clear how to accomplish this. The true bottleneck to medical schools receiving more students is not addressed either.
Adam Kay's assertion that he respects patients' choices rings hollow as he describes scare tactics he employs to bully patients into his way of doing things often using forceps or cesarean deliveries despite the inherent risks.
Mocking patients for being overweight, using natural remedies, or religious beliefs were other demeaning stories. Yet the author seems unsatisfied not knowing the end result for his patients. One of his more human aspects. His further feelings of awkwardness in dealing with grieving patients and wish to do more is a familiar feeling for most of us. He talks about the necessity of developing a "hardened emotional exoskeleton" to deal with all the hard stuff that happens with patients.
He concludes with a plea to not allow government, i.e. British government, "to take a pickax to the (nationalized) health-care system." I suggest taking a different approach. More government controls, more legislation will never fix what was broken through that process in the first place.
As more doctors and hospitals embrace meditation, yoga, healing touch, and now we may begin to see health coaches (link) involved in patient care there may begin to be more tolerance toward patient choice in the medical system in general. Let us hope!
Tyler Cowen's new book Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero looks like it has some interesting advice on the topic of healthcare reform. I am intrigued by what I've read about the book and hope we can integrate more free market principles in the healthcare system.
It is interesting to note that amidst the push for Medicare For All, there has been a significant reform to Medicare in recent history that brought some measure of relief to people in the system. Medicare Part D's success in reducing costs and improving health outcomes seems to be in large part because of the increased choices (link) and free market principles it afforded.
When I first read the title, This Is Going to Hurt, I did not realize it referred to how it would feel to read (and review) this book. I urge you to consider reading Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero instead!
I received a free advanced reader copy of this book. All opinions are completely my own.
See the full review on BookofRuthAnn.com for quotes and article links!
