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Reading this book is going to hurt, but mainly from holding your sides with the laughter it induces. Adam Kay spent six years as a junior obstetrician and gynaecologist in the NHS and here presents the highlights and lowlights. He is now a comedy scriptwriter, and although humour informs many of his recollections the experiences they are based on probably weren’t so funny at the time. It might be hard to see the funny side of being covered in a tsunami of body fluids, witnessing (and smelling) the travails of labour and Caesarean sections or retrieving all sorts of strange objects from various orifices, but Kay conveys it humorously in his writing. There are some truly zany encounters, such as the patient’s husband who maintained that absolutely no condoms fitted him until Kay established that he pulled them down over his testicles. But the suffering, loss and sorrow that went with the job are not ignored, or the shortcomings of the system – ridiculous hours and poor pay – that cause so many good doctors to leave.
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