Review: This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor

This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior DoctorThis Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Thanks for the recommendation @Gokila!

This is a brilliant, light heart-ed read.
However, most of the entries in this Diary will sound strange to the Indian reader. Surely Doctors are not this humble, are they? And what is this blasphemy - a patient conversing on equal terms with the doctor? But the other side is not so pretty either.

Here in India, we have a different kind of Patient - Doctor relationship than the rest of the world. We simultaneously adore them and loathe them. A significant portion of the population wants their off-springs to try their hand at being doctors - but an equally large portion of the population thinks the doctors conspire to put them through painful and expensive procedures to mint money. (Or worse, to "train" at their expense)

We all have read about doctors getting attacked by mobs because someone passed away and the crowd thought it was because the doctors did not do enough. The Prime Minister of the country recently alleged that doctors were being bribed by big pharma companies with gadgets, trips and even women. Clearly, India has miles to go in both directions. We need doctors who would deign to step off their pedestal and treat their patients as equal beings (not in the context of medicine, just to be clear). And we need patients who are capable of seeing the human underneath the white coat. And they have their very-much-human existence to live through and that puts a strain on them that most of us do not know.

I guess this ended up being more of a rant than a book review, but then this book hits all the right notes that you take it for granted. Of course a collection of diary entries by a Junior doctor in the Great Britain is supposed  to be this funny, witty and articulate. I guess it goes to the credit of the author that one feels so.


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