This is going to hurt

I agree with you terribull I really hope that during childbirth and a miscarriage that the doctors treating me were nothing like him.

We've just caught up with this. I absolutely love it. Adam Kay based it on his own experiences in the NHS.

lemsip

as MerylStreet has sent a link to this I will add the headline and link

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10506277/This-Going-Hurt-author-Adam-Kay-sang-vile-songs-Downs-syndrome-baby.html?login#readerCommentsCommand-message-field
This Is Going To Hurt author Adam Kay sang vile songs about a Down's syndrome baby and Northern women as part of comedy duo.........8While he worked for the NHS Adam Kay wrote parody songs with offensive lyrics
The author has desperately tried to remove any trace of them from the internet
In one performed song, a Down's syndrome baby is referred to as a 'mong'

Gallows humour it may well be and I'm swimming against the tide on this thread, but I'm agreeing with Janice Turner in finding it "unbearable hateful towards women, especially pregnant ones. They're just thick cows, malingerers, bigots, vaginas or slabs of meat" and the link above says a lot about Adam Kay too imo!

Aveline, the abbreviation FLK for funny-looking kid could be useful as a way of suggesting that a baby might need follow-up because there was something not quite right about it. Other staff would be alerted without alarming the parents before there was definitely something to be alarmed about. Not all conditions of the new-born are obvious.

What doctors have to know has changed, really. They’re now told that they won’t retain every single thing about every single condition they’ve been taught, because it’s now at the touch of a keypad. At one time, a doctor reaching for a book was frowned upon because it was a sign that they didn’t know everything. Today, it’s a sign that they’re prepared to research something.

Medicine is also much more complex today with many new treatments as well as much more scientific knowledge about the human body.

When DH was diagnosed with multiple myeloma DD's doctor friend said "Oh we always called myeloma Moans, Bones and Groans when I was a student. Might not be acceptable now.

That’s what a friend whose son was training to be a doctor told me. Her son could have worked shorter hours but would have had to study for more years to gain the experience required. It’s made me think about Jeremy Hunt, given that I look to him as being a much better PM than the one we have now, but have started remembering how he, I believe called junior doctors ‘lazy’ ( I need to double check that, though) when he in charge of health.

One of the difficulties with working hours is the fact that they learn by doing - this is how they acquire the skills they need. And the more new treatments and the more innovations in medicine, then the more they have to learn. How to cram it all in?

I liked the bit when the grumpy old lady was saying nobody would miss her and he said he was sure the lion and the wardrobe would.

I laughed a lot eg ‘I can lip read y’know’. But I cried a lot, too. It’s really stayed with me.

Aveline

FLK = funny looking kid
NFF= normal for Fife
Wouldn't be allowed these days.
Just finished binge watching the programme. Absolutely not a comedy. A pretty serious drama but very well done.

It was very well done. Some very sad and serious issues. But also funny. As one critic says of it it is a gory, blackly comic eye-opener

Couldn't have put it better myself

Because there simply aren’t enough doctors to cover all those hours without long shifts, Grannyrebel.

It’s a vicious circle, junior doctors such as my dd have to work such long hours, often 75+ hours a week, but that, along the way they are treated by some members of Joe Public, then leads to dissatisfaction with their lives and they leave to do other jobs that allow them to have a life.

As a non medic I don't understand why junior doctors are expected to work such long hours. Surely this is not safe. Why can't they just work normal hours? Enjoyed the books and the programme btw.

FLK = funny looking kid
NFF= normal for Fife
Wouldn't be allowed these days.
Just finished binge watching the programme. Absolutely not a comedy. A pretty serious drama but very well done.

Lucca

??

Probably best not to know….I worked at the Labour exchange in my youth. One day I went to get something and realised the lady I was interviewing had glanced at her notes which said ‘aged 30 but looks much older’. Not written by me I hasten to add but still awkward…

??

FLK and NFF?

Lots of things that went on in the NHS would not be acceptable now and things have changed in step with society now.
For example it was common to see abbreviations written on patients notes describing them in a derogatory fashion.

I haven’t read the books but I have already watched several episodes, Its funny (gallows humour) but at the same time very sad with some very traumatic scenes. Definitely not for the squeamish and it would be worrying to watch if you were pregnant. I’m enjoying it.

Just binge watched the series. LOVED it.

It would be unacceptable now but he was very young. How many of us said or did things when we were twenty that would horrify us now? I don’t intend to let what he did then overshadow what he went on to do to highlight the dangerously long hours and terrible conditions that young doctors have to work under.

unacceptable!

as MerylStreet has sent a link to this I will add the headline and link

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10506277/This-Going-Hurt-author-Adam-Kay-sang-vile-songs-Downs-syndrome-baby.html?login#readerCommentsCommand-message-field
This Is Going To Hurt author Adam Kay sang vile songs about a Down's syndrome baby and Northern women as part of comedy duo.........8While he worked for the NHS Adam Kay wrote parody songs with offensive lyrics
The author has desperately tried to remove any trace of them from the internet
In one performed song, a Down's syndrome baby is referred to as a 'mong'

When my Dad was a young hospital doctor he lived in the doctor's mess. They were very well looked after, even had a butler. So, yes, the hours were all consuming but they didn't have the stresses of food shopping, laundry, travel to work, flat rental, organising utilities, mobile phone contracts etc and all the complications of modern life. Like many doctors, he found romance with a nurse. They talked very fondly of their time in Obs and Gynae. Changed days I fear.

Luckygirl3

Medics have strange senses of humour - I spent my life married to one. They need some outlet for their uniquely stressful life. It wore my poor OH down.

The scene in the first episode where Adam was on a trolley holding in a prolapsed cord really does happen - my OH ran alongside a trolley, up in the lift and along the corridor to theatre with his hand inside a patient holding in the cord. That is not something that normally features in someone's life.

It all wore him out and made any semblance of home life very difficult. I think this aspect was very well depicted in the TV series. We all got used to Dad being permanently wrecked and under stress. I got used to him stopping being able to talk about it and get more and more unhappy. No job should wreck people's lives like this.

The depiction of the vast additional stress caused by the system in which they work was also well shown: endless paperwork, equipment failures, window-dressing for visiting dignitaries, staff going off with stress and the remaining staff doing double shifts, endless meetings to get basic needs met, doing a more than full-time job whilst also having to study for exams etc. The PC classes were real - I went to several when I was working in hospitals. My OH used to come home furious, fed up with wasting him time on this "bollocks," as he used to say, when work was piling up.

There was of course a degree of exaggeration - but really not much. It truly is a very very stressful environment and the arrogance of consultants was very real - I have some hope that this is less so now.

I thought the acting was excellent.

It was however quite a weird presentation in many ways and I can understand that someone who had not worked in the setting might find it far-fetched.

Great post. Really interesting insight thank you