Comedy writing is extremely difficult to achieve. It is hard to make someone laugh out loud in a public space simply from something they have read. Likewise, emotionally powerful writing is extremely difficult to achieve. It is hard to make someone burst into tears in a public space simply from something they have read. To be able to do both, on the same page, within the space of 30 seconds, whilst delivering an important and powerful message, now that is a rare talent.
This book is clearly sold as a light hearted, fun romp through the madness and hilarity of day to day life in a hospital. You pick it up off the ‘bestsellers’ section at Waterstones on Oxford Street and have a flick through, it will appear the marketing is correct. Humerous anecdotes galore, read it on the plane, train or bus without having to use too much of your brain and you’ll have a nice chuckle at the dry wit of the author. So you buy it, the garish yellow pages lending itself to the idea that it’s effectively a joke book for adults who don’t get too squeemish. So you start reading it and to begin with all seems as expected, admittedly it’s actually a little funnier than you thought and you find yourself full on belly laughing within the first twenty pages and then… suddenly… the entire illusion comes crashing down around you and your face stings as a tear rolls down your cheek.
Being a doctor in the NHS, hell in any healcare service is often like any other job. It’s not as heroic as most people think, there’s a lot of disimpacting bowels, a lot of popping boils and handing out paracetomol for a hangover. Then there are defining moments, saving a baby’s life, seeing a case of terminal cancer going into remission, getting that kid thats been in ICU for two months home in time for Christmas with his family. These are the wins, yes they matter a lot more than wins in other jobs, but I imagine they produce the same sort of feelings as an Insurance broker winning a tricky tender, if you do well it feels great. The difference for a doctor is for when it goes wrong. A bad day for the insurance broker is losing out in a bid to get a contract, shake it off and try again, it’s a scrap of paper at the end of the day who cares, it’s par for the course. When it goes wrong for the doctor though a five year old child loses their life from what should have been a simple appendectomy. A baby and mother dies in a complicated childbirth, despite no complications being anticipated. They watch helplessly as a fit and healthy young person wastes away as treatment after treatment fails until they are nothing but a scared skeleton waiting to die and there is nothing you can do about it. That’s their bad day. Then they have to go down the corridor, fill out the paperwork, turn around and carry on, working for another ten hours and doing it all again without letting it affect them.
This book is not about the hilarious anecdotes, that’s the filler, that’s what moves it off the shelves and gets you to buy it. Don’t get me wrong, they are absolutely hilarious and I found myself laughing harder at this book than I have at anything in a very long time. They aren’t the point of it though.
Britain is currently facing a whole load of crisises, Brexit, Political instability, the rise of fringe politics, Katie Hopkins. But the most important, and the often neglected one is that of the NHS. I am no political commentator and I’m not going to pretend to be. I won’t go into the intricacies of it all because I don’t know enough about it. What I do know is that the NHS is the most succesful and central healthcare system in the world (depending on your metric). Any person, so long as they are on british soil can walk into an NHS hospital and they will be seen (maybe on a bit of a wait) and if they pay their taxes they will walk away again without a penny to spend, whether they had the sniffles or had a leg reconstructed. The NHS is the fifth largest employer in the entire world, after the US DoD, The Chinese People’s Army, Walmart and MacDonalds. When you consider the fact that that is purely within the four walls of the UK that is an astonishing amount of people’s livlihoods depending on it. Nearly 3% of the UK’s population is directly employed by the NHS, not taking into account the millions of jobs that exist because of its demands and supplies.
The point of this book is to highlight one aspect of this collosal beast: the Junior Doctors. Adam Kay was a junior doctor when he wrote these hilarious and heartrending extracts and so he knows exactly what it means to be in that insane institution, and as the book shows, it truly is an insane institution. We often hear about the intense lifestyles of say Bankers and lawyers: long ours, high intensity work, lots of pressure, but then they also get the enormous paycheck that goes with it. Hard work equals bigger paycheck, that is the basic unwritten rule of life, you work harder, you get more money (generally). So what the hell went wrong with the junior doctor situation? There are hospital managers earning four, five, six times higher than the doctors themselves. They work twenty hour days, every day for weeks. They hold life and death in their hands daily and yet are paid a pittance, can’t get days off, don’t have sufficient mental health support and all around are being continuously let down by the system, and people wonder why there are issues being seen. Who would honestly want this job? It used to be that being a doctor was a treasured role, held in high regard by people of all walks, including politicians. Now it feels they are villified, sued and held as scapegoats for failures of management and policy and it is this point that the book is tring to make. Amongst the hilarity (and I cannot stress this enough, it is hilarious) there are allusions to the problems and his experiences of them, building to the book’s climax which I won’t give away. It’s a hard thing to read and it opened my eyes to a world of issues and problems I only had an inkling of beforehand.
I would suggest this book to everyone. It really is hilarious, easy to read and enjoyable with every page. I read quickly but I read this in less than a day. A work day. It was utterly enthralling. Remember when you read it though that between the hilarity is a definite message, this is not just a funny book, it’s a fuck you to a broken system in desperate need of reform and aid. It’s not just something to read and throw away, it’s something to think about and maybe even take action. Above all however, it is a highly highly enjoyable and emotionally evocative peice of writing, for me Adam Kay gets full marks, and I hope that TV writing is a little less chaotic than his previous job…