For several years now, my handful of Twitter followers
have been audience to multiple weekly retweets of articles, stats and news
stories concerning the problems faced by the NHS and junior doctors, largely thanks to Jeremy Hunt’s expediency and ineptitude. Is there a single
statistic the man hasn’t yet managed to warp for his own ends? More recently,
my (re)tweeting regarding the NHS has increased has increased,
(probably to the dismay of the 90% of my followers who are sheep farmers;
they’re more interested in Michael Gove’s ineptitude these days)
and the reason for this is because
I’ve started researching and working on a novel where the protagonist is a
junior doctor. It’s early stages yet, but the plot is slowly taking shape.
Writing about current, raw, politically-sensitive
issues is something I’ve dabbled in previously when talking about farming, but
it was nowhere near on this scale. I realised instantly that in fictionalising
something which for many is real, exhausting, everyday life, there is a
burgeoning level of responsibility and the potential for any amount of backlash
if it’s done wrong. A daunting starting position. What I should mention here,
however, is that this is not a hospital-based story; my protagonist is taking a
gap year after her FY2 training (second year foundation training - before you specialise) but the story
requires a good deal of knowledge about the issues faced by staff in our
hospitals and the factors which are driving the UK’s junior doctors to
hospitals abroad, or in many cases, to leave the profession.
All of this has led to a stack of medicine-based
memoirs rapidly building up on my desk. At the top of that pile was Adam Kay’s
Sunday Times Bestseller This is Going to Hurt - Secret Diaries of a Junior
Doctor. Adam Kay left the profession: a tragedy to which anyone having read
the book will attest. He’s now a comedy writer, musician and performer and by
the clout of the reviewers on the book cover (Jonathan Ross, Charlie Brooker,
Stephen Fry) he’s clearly doing fairly well at it. The NHS’s loss was
undoubtedly entertainment’s gain, but from the very early pages you read this
book knowing that the account you’re reading, one of compassion, skill,
excellence and mirth, does not end with his becoming a consultant, buying a
Ferrari and enjoying long weekends in the south of France. Indeed, he addresses
this himself: ‘(Sorry for the spoiler, but you watched Titanic knowing
how that was going to play out)’. His friend and colleague does, however, end
up driving a Bentley Continental GT for a few weeks in a surreally funny entry.
The book starts as it means to go on: an
introduction and notes so quippy you’ve choked on your cup of tea twice before
you get to page one, where Christmas dinner and a Morrissey reference gladly
await you. By page five we’ve already covered religion and Harold Shipman, so
we’re pretty well set and ready to go. Make no mistake, this book is
wonderful, at times uplifting and hilariously, side-splittingly funny, apart
from at the moments when it is so gut-wrenchingly sad and inhumane that you
wonder how anyone on earth can survive such things and continue to function. A
career is obs and gynae (brats and twats as it’s delightfully nicknamed) is
largely accountable for this pendulum effect, though I have no doubt it’s
repeated throughout the NHS in all its specialties.
Covering his time from House Officer to Senior
Registrar (or whatever they are in new money) this book chronicles a growth in
ability, knowledge, confidence and coping strategies, alongside the breakdown of
relationships, friendships, mental health and humanity. Its genius is in how it
strikes the balance of comedy and horror and opens up issues and discussion to
the widest of audiences. Rarely is something so funny quite so important, and rarer
again is the brilliant way that relationship has been handled.
I read it in two days, getting copies in both
hardback and kindle format for easy binge-reading at any opportunity and have recommended
it to various friends and family. My co-workers have enjoyed a couple of
impromptu readings too, though I had to choose audience-appropriate extracts rather carefully.
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