This is Going to Hurt

The Bestselling Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor

By: Adam Kay

Narrated by: Adam Kay

Read by the author, Adam Kay.

The multi-million copy bestseller
Book of the Year at The National Book Awards

‘Painfully funny. The pain and the funniness somehow add up to something entirely good, entirely noble and entirely loveable.' - Stephen Fry

Welcome to the life of a junior doctor: 97-hour weeks, life and death decisions, a constant tsunami of bodily fluids, and the hospital parking meter earns more than you.

Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know – and more than a few things you didn't – about life on and off the hospital ward.

Sunday Times Number One Bestseller for over eight months and winner of a record FOUR National Book Awards: Book of the Year, Non-Fiction Book of the Year, New Writer of the Year and Zoe Ball Book Club Book of the Year.

This edition includes extra diary entries and a new afterword by the author.

Critic reviews

Painfully funny. The pain and the funniness somehow add up to something entirely good, entirely noble and entirely loveable. (Stephen Fry)

I'm not a Doctor (despite what I sometimes say) but I’d prescribe this book to anyone and everyone. It's laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreakingly sad and gives you the lowdown on what it’s like to be holding it together while serving on the front line of our beloved but beleaguered NHS. It’s wonderful (Jonathan Ross)

Finally a true picture of the harrowing, hilarious and ultimately chaotic life of the junior doctor in all its gory glory, dark comedy and unavoidable sadness. A blisteringly funny account shot through with harrowing detail, many pertinent truths and the humanity we all hope doctors conceal behind their unflappable exteriors. (Jo Brand)

As hilarious as it is heartbreaking – and it IS heartbreaking (also hilarious) (Charlie Brooker)

Unputdownable. You must read this book if you like reading, like laughing or love our NHS. It’s a spit-your-tea-out-laughing clarion call to stand up for our junior doctors with all our might (Shappi Khorsandi)

What an amazing book. I laughed so hard and often I nearly choked, but it’s also very moving and important. Everyone should read it. (Cathy Rentzenbrink)

By turns hilarious, shocking, heartbreaking and humbling (John Niven)

Much like the NHS itself, this book is filled with hope, despair, miracles, catastrophe and acres of the sharpest gallows humour. A very funny book with a very sobering message (Chris Addison)

Horrifyingly hilarious and hilariously horrifying (Danny Wallace)

This is a ferociously funny book, but beneath the sheen of brilliant one-liners is a passionate, acutely personal examination of what the health service does for us, and what we're in danger of doing to it (Mark Watson)

As a hypochondriac I was worried about reading Adam Kay’s book. Luckily it’s incredibly funny – so funny, in fact, that it gave me a hernia from laughing (Joe Lycett)

A scurrilously funny, poignant and fascinatingly horrific tale of being torn to pieces and spat out by the strangely loveable but graceless monster that is the NHS (Milton Jones)

If we lose the NHS, Adam Kay’s diary of his him as a junior doctor will become a historical record of a unique, empathy-powered machine, and make it not just one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, but one of the saddest, too (David Whitehouse)

What a hilarious, stomach-churning, thought-provoking heartbreaker of a book. I loved every single page (Jill Mansell)

Superb. Unusual and funny and sad (Pam Ayres)

By turns witty, gruesome, alarming, and touching. Always illuminating and searingly honest (Jonathan Dimbleby)

This should be required reading for anyone who works in, uses or even voices an opinion about the NHS. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll laugh some more, you’ll think twice about ever reproducing (Dean Burnett, author of The Idiot Brain)

Brilliant

Absolutely brilliant. As a psychologist, I can identify with his love for the work and the damaged it caused him, loving it too much. All the while, with self deprecating, razor sharp humour, he allows us into this world.

Awesome !!!

Awesome depiction of life as a JD..can see myself therein ..nice one as a read !!

A gem of reality based comedy

Really loved the book! And would pay twice as much for an unredacted version with more cringy stories as well. A well crafter story of a young doctor plowing through incredibly difficult career. Full of funny stories and a incredibly depressing NHS situation as a background. If you like stand-up - you will love the book.

Incredible

Thoroughly entertaining and yet gives you a renewed respect for health care workers. Definitely going to listen to it again and recommend it highly

Eye opening to the general public!

As a medical intern, this was such a therapeutic experience for me. Medicine is such a hard career and this book captures perfectly what we go through. The world must know and understand. I appreciate this book so much and thank you for the honesty and candidness. The world needs it. And other doctors need it.