This Is Going to Hurt [TV Tie-in]: Secret Diaries of a Young Doctor ― A Darkly Funny Medical Memoir

Now an AMC+ series starring Ben Whishaw

The acclaimed multimillion-copy bestseller, This Is Going to Hurt is Adam Kay’s equally "blisteringly funny" (Boston Globe) and "heartbreaking" (New Yorker) medical memoir, based on the secret diaries of his years as a junior doctor.

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 medical resident Adam Kay’s This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the front lines of medicine and a candid look at real hospital life.

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.

Doctor Diaries: Based on secret diaries scribbled after 97-hour weeks, this true story is a no-holds-barred account of what it’s really like to be a doctor.
Medical Humor: Find out why you earn less than the hospital parking meter, what it feels like to be covered in a tsunami of bodily fluids, and how a comedian’s wit is the only way to survive.
Heartbreaking and Hilarious: One minute you’ll be howling with laughter, the next you’ll be wiping away a tear. This book is a rollercoaster of hilarious, horrifying, and heartbreaking moments on the NHS front lines.
British Humor: Perfect for fans of brutally honest and darkly funny nonfiction, this bestselling memoir reveals everything you wanted to know―and a few things you didn’t―about life as a doctor in the UK.

Adam Kay is an award-winning writer and former non-award-winning junior doctor. His first book "This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor" was a Sunday Times number one bestseller for over a year and has sold over 3 million copies in 37 languages. It was followed up by number one bestsellers "Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas" and "Undoctored".

He is also one of the UK's bestselling children's authors, with "Kay's Anatomy" the fastest-selling nonfiction kids' book of the decade. Other children's books include "Kay's Marvellous Medicine" and his first picture book "Amy Gets Eaten".

adamkay.co.uk

"Darkly funny. ... heartbreaking." - Sam Knight, The New Yorker

"Hilarious and heartbreaking. ...I howled, yelped, and occasionally choked with laughter. ...This book may hurt, but in an important and necessary way." - Cathy Rentzenbrink, The Times (London), “Humour Book of the Year”

“It's so hilarious. It's so irreverent, both about himself, the patients, the doctors in charge of him, that I think I laughed on every page.” - Kristan Higgins, Entertainment Weekly

"So clinically funny and politically important that it should be given out on prescription." - The Guardian

"Brilliant. Five stars. Amazing." - Mark Haddon, bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

"Painfully funny. The pain and the funniness somehow add up to something entirely good, entirely noble, and entirely lovable." - Stephen Fry, actor, comedian, and author of Mythos

"Bloody funny." - Minnie Driver

"Blisteringly funny." - Boston Globe

This Is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay is a darkly funny, painfully honest memoir about his years working as a junior doctor in the British National Health Service, showing the chaos, exhaustion, and emotional toll hidden behind hospital doors while still managing to be sharply witty and deeply human. Written in the form of diary entries he kept during his training and work as an obstetrician and gynaecologist, the book pulls the reader into long, relentless days and nights on the wards, where Kay is constantly rushing between emergencies, juggling impossible workloads, and trying to care for patients while his own life slowly falls apart. He describes starting out as a young, idealistic medical student who believes becoming a doctor is both noble and secure, then discovering that the reality is very different: endless shifts, limited resources, and a system that demands more than any human being can reasonably give. The tone is conversational and laced with sharp humor—he uses jokes and absurd anecdotes to soften the heaviness—but beneath the laughter sits a serious message about how fragile and under pressure the NHS and its staff truly are. One of the main threads of the memoir is just how much is asked of junior doctors: Kay often works days that stretch beyond 12 hours, sleeps badly, eats quickly when he can, and repeatedly misses important events in his personal life because his job demands his presence. Birthdays, anniversaries, dinners, even time with his partner all fall away as he scrambles from ward to ward, holding bleeping pagers and dealing with emergencies that can change lives in minutes. He writes about sleeping in his car because there wasn’t time to commute home before the next shift, about blood on his shirt and shoes, about being so tired that he finds himself standing in a hospital corridor not quite sure how he got there. The book makes clear that medicine is not just intellectually challenging; it is physically draining and emotionally brutal, and those who do it are often hanging on by a thread.

Kay’s specialty brings him into intimate contact with birth, pregnancy, and reproductive health, so many of his stories involve pregnancies gone right and wrong, joyful deliveries, and heartbreaking losses. He describes the surreal routine of performing caesarean sections, delivering babies at odd hours, and dealing with complications that arise suddenly and require swift, decisive action. There are moments of pure joy, when healthy babies are delivered and parents are overwhelmed with gratitude, but also raw, devastating scenes when outcomes are tragic: miscarriages, stillbirths, mothers in danger, and families whose lives are shattered in seconds. Through his diary entries, Kay shows the internal struggle doctors face in these situations—they must stay calm, skilled, and practical even while they are witnessing some of the hardest moments people will ever endure. The book doesn’t hide the human side of medicine: Kay admits to crying in hospital toilets, feeling overwhelming guilt when cases go badly, and carrying memories of certain patients with him for years. He points out that while doctors are trained to be professional, they are not robots, and the emotional burden of watching suffering and death day after day can be enormous.

At the same time, the memoir is packed with bizarre, almost unbelievable anecdotes that showcase both the strange things doctors encounter and Kay’s talent for comic timing. He tells stories of odd objects stuck in unexpected places, of patients with unusual misunderstandings about their own bodies, of awkward conversations with family members, and of moments where the absurdity of the situation almost defies belief. These scenes provide humor that keeps the book readable and often very entertaining, but they also serve another purpose: they highlight how much doctors see that the public never hears about, and how they learn to use humor as a coping mechanism. Kay’s jokes are often sharp, sometimes crude, but they feel genuine; they are the jokes of someone who has had to laugh in order not to break. He shares the frequent frustration of dealing with bureaucracy, unhelpful management decisions, and government policies that treat staff like replaceable parts rather than people. Underneath the comedy, there is a constant thread of criticism aimed at a system that stretches staff too thin and then blames them when things go wrong.

The personal side of Kay’s life runs alongside the professional chaos. He writes about the strain his job puts on his relationship with his partner, about the loneliness of working nights and weekends while everyone else lives a normal social life, and about the gradual erosion of his own mental health. The more responsibility he takes on and the more hours he works, the less space he has to process his experiences or care for himself. He begins to feel burned out, shaky, and detached, yet the culture around him suggests that doctors should “just get on with it,” treating exhaustion and emotional pain as signs of weakness rather than serious problems. The book shows how this culture can be dangerous, leaving doctors unsupported and pushing them to the limit. Kay makes it clear that the expectations placed on junior doctors were not just difficult; they were often inhuman, creating conditions where mistakes were more likely and recovery from trauma was nearly impossible.

A turning point in the memoir comes with a serious incident on the ward—a clinical event that has a tragic outcome and marks Kay deeply. Without going into explicit graphic detail, he describes how one particular case, involving a pregnant patient, goes horribly wrong despite his and the team’s efforts, resulting in a devastating loss. The incident leads to an investigation and forces Kay to confront not only the consequences of what happened but also his own limits. He feels crushing guilt and begins to question whether he can continue in medicine at all. That moment becomes the fulcrum on which the entire book balances: it shows the gap between what people expect of doctors—near perfection—and what medicine really is: a complex, unpredictable field where outcomes are not always controllable, even with skill and care. The emotional aftermath of this event eventually leads Kay to leave medicine, a decision that he presents not as a simple escape but as a painful necessity for his own mental survival.

Throughout the book, Kay also uses his experiences to comment on the state of the NHS. He describes understaffed wards, outdated equipment, and the strain caused by political decisions that cut funding or increase pressure without providing support. He notes how doctors are often blamed publicly for system failures, while the deeper issues of resources and policy remain unaddressed. By sharing the reality of long unpaid overtime, limited breaks, and constant emotional strain, he aims to make readers understand just how much is carried by those at the front lines of healthcare. His writing often directly addresses the public, urging them to see doctors and nurses as human beings who deserve better working conditions and respect. In this way, the memoir becomes both a personal story and a kind of plea on behalf of the entire profession.

Despite its heavy themes, This Is Going to Hurt remains engaging and accessible because of Kay’s voice: self-deprecating, sharp, and honest. He is willing to admit his mistakes, to show himself as flawed and sometimes overwhelmed, which makes the book feel human rather than heroic. The humor never fully hides the pain, but it does make it bearable to read about the difficult situations he faced. By the end of the memoir, the reader has traveled with him from bright-eyed trainee to exhausted doctor who can no longer cope, and the title—“This Is Going to Hurt”—proves to apply not only to patients experiencing medical procedures, but to doctors whose careers and lives are shaped by constant pressure. The book leaves a lasting impression of how much is asked of those who care for us when we are at our most vulnerable, and it invites empathy for the hidden emotional scars carried by the people who wear the white coats and hold the stethoscopes.