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This Is Going to Hurt

The Bestselling Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor

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This Is Going to Hurt

By: Adam Kay
Narrated by: Adam Kay
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About this listen

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.

 Education & Training Medical Medicine & Health Care Industry Professionals & Academics Funny Witty Inspiring Thought-Provoking Heartfelt Comedy Feel-Good Health Care

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)
All stars
Most relevant
I hardly ever write reviews but this is such a great audiobook I had to! I've seen Adam perform his music live several times and love his dry sense of humour but this book is on another level - but gave me more to think about afterwards than I expected. Excellent as an audiobook read by him.

Heartbreaking and hilarious!

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I was expecting the job to be hard, but nothing like this. I hope this book can help change many perspectives on what a life of a doctor really is.
Great book, would definitely buy a part two even if it was the more mundane.

Shocking, emotional, funny insight

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enjoyed the book..no story just a diary of hospital doctor...quite amusing..don't read it if you are pregnant or thinking of getting pregnant!!!!! Interest in thobgs medical would be good to properly enjoy book

it's amazing what people do for fun..

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However, once you've finished laughing, you may not know how you're going to explain why.

This book is everything you'd expect - hilarity, sadness and lots of things inserted into orifices.

It's a very easy listen, Adam keeps the pace and you'll be at the end and wanting more in no time.

The subtext of Adam's memory is the sad state of affairs that the NHS has been turned into by successive governments. If we all buy a copy of this book and throw it over the railings into Downing Street then someone may ask why - and perhaps a conversation could start.

Just think about Adam's words the next time you need care - actually don't do that. Pretend that you're absolutely certain that the person who is about to save your life may know what they're doing.

See one. Do One. Teach One.



Warning - you are going to laugh loudly!

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This made me appreciate the NHS even more but had me tearing my hair out about how it’s grown into a massive monster that apparently can’t be controlled. Adam’s narration brought me to tears of laughter and sadness in equal measure.

Brilliant, funny and sad

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