What am I reading?
I struggled with this one. It gets rave reviews. Most people seem to find it hilarious as well as effective in exposing the exhaustion and madness of being a junior doctor in an over-stretched national health system. I dove in, ready to be amused as well as shocked…
Not once did I laugh out loud. Only a few times did I raise a chuckle. The absurdities of human systems and behaviour stand out, but women’s bodies, and some of their most vulnerable moments, are the endless butt of Kay’s jokes.
While I understood that humour was Kay’s protective mechanism, I kept wondering why he went into Obstetrics. He respects the “privacy” of his patients by changing names and details, but his snappy little diary entries began to feel, to this reader, like a violation in spirit of his duty of care.
Where Kay does hold me captive is the way he exposes the irony that workers in the NHS are forced into unhealthy lifestyles. They appear worked to the bone, starved of regular meals, and forced into unpaid overtime through their own ethic of care. In Kay’s account, NHS technology is way behind the times, system “improvements” ignore actual conditions, and a top-down management system resembles boarding school hazing. You suffer until you rise to the top, and then you inflict suffering by being part of that same system. The actual work of the NHS shines through, yet Kay warns us that disaster is always around the corner.
The most compelling moment comes near the end of the book. Kay drops his rather traditional style of male banter and exposes a raw confrontation with death. He feels responsible and traumatised, yet humility emerges at the moment he decides to leave medicine. It is hard to tell if he has been damaged or made more whole.
For another angle on a more critical perspective: Review in UnHerd
