In the US edition of this international bestseller, Adam Kay channels Henry Marsh and David Sedaris to tell us the "darkly funny" (The New Yorker) -- and sometimes horrifying -- truth about life and work in a hospital. Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave goodbye to your friends and relationships. Welcome to the life of a first-year doctor. Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, comedian and former medical resident Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the front lines of medicine. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking by turns, this is everything you wanted to know -- and more than a few things you didn't -- about life on and off the hospital ward. And yes, it may leave a scar.
This is not a new book but a specially adapted version of Adam Kay's bestseller This is Going to Hurt for Quick Reads. These short books are perfect for adults who are discovering reading for pleasure for the first time. Welcome to the life of a junior doctor. You work 97 hours a week. You make life and death decisions. You are often covered in blood (or worse) from head to toe. And the hospital parking meter earns more money than you do. Adam Kay's diary was written in secret after long days, sleepless nights and missed weekends. It is funny, moving and sometimes shocking. This is everything you wanted to know – and more than a few things you didn't – about life on and off the hospital ward. Specially rewritten for ease of reading by Francesca Main.
The number one Sunday Times bestseller in a new festive package, Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas is the perfect stocking filler from the author of multi-million-copy bestseller This is Going to Hurt – now a major BBC TV series. Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat . . . but 1.4 million NHS staff are heading off to work. In this perfect present for anyone who has ever set foot in a hospital, Adam Kay delves back into his diaries for a hilarious, horrifying and sometimes heartbreaking peek behind the blue curtain at Christmastime. This is a love letter to all those who spend their festive season on the front line, removing babies and baubles from the various places they get stuck, at the most wonderful time of the year. ‘The perfect surgical stocking-filler’ The Times
THE RECORD-BREAKING NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER FROM THE UK'S BESTSELLING NON-FICTION AUTHOR. Discover all the weird and wonderful things that go on inside your body with Adam Kay. Covers key stage 2 / 3 human biology syllabus (in a slightly repulsive way). 'Hilarious and fascinating! I wish Adam had been my biology teacher' - Konnie Huq Do you ever think about your body and how it all works? Like really properly think about it? The human body is extraordinary and fascinating and, well . . . pretty weird. Yours is weird, mine is weird, your maths teacher's is even weirder. This book is going to tell you what's actually going on in there, and answer the really important questions, like: Are bogeys safe to eat? Look, if your nose is going to all that effort of creating a snack, the least we can do is check out its nutritional value. (Yes, they're safe. Chew away!) And how much of your life will you spend on the toilet? About a year - so bring a good book. (I recommend this one.) So sit back, relax, put on some rubber gloves, and let a doctor take you on a poo (and puke) filled tour of your insides. Welcome to Kay's Anatomy*. *a fancy word for your body. See, you're learning already. 'The sort of book I would have loved as a child' - Malorie Blackman 'Like listening to a teacher who makes pupils fall about' - The Times 'Absolutely packed with facts... Entertaining and highly informative' - Daily Mail 'As brilliant, and revolting, as the human body it celebrates' - The i newspaper 'Totally brilliant!' - Jacqueline Wilson 'If only this funny and informative book had been around when I was too embarrassed to teach my kids about bodily functions' - David Baddiel
THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Curated and edited by Adam Kay (author of multi-million bestseller This is Going to Hurt), Dear NHS features 100 household names telling their personal stories of the health service. Contributors include: Paul McCartney, Emilia Clarke, Peter Kay, Stephen Fry, Sir Trevor McDonald, Graham Norton, Sir Michael Palin, Naomie Harris, Sir David Jason, Dame Emma Thompson, Joanna Lumley, Miranda Hart, Jamie Oliver, Ed Sheeran, David Tennant, Dame Julie Walters, Emma Watson, Malala Yousafzai and many, many more. All profits from this book will go to NHS Charities Together to fund vital research and projects, and The Lullaby Trust which supports parents bereaved of babies and young children. Other writers include Jack Whitehall, Chris Evans, Lorraine Kelly, Lee Mack, Jonathan Ross, Konnie Huq, Frank Skinner, KT Tunstall and Sandi Toksvig. The NHS is our single greatest achievement as a country. No matter who you are, no matter what your health needs are, and no matter how much money you have, the NHS is there for you. In Dear NHS, 100 inspirational people come together to share their stories of how the national health service has been there for them, and changed their lives in the process. By turns deeply moving, hilarious, hopeful and impassioned, these stories together become a love letter to the NHS and the 1.4 million people who go above and beyond the call of duty every single day - selflessly, generously, putting others before themselves, never more so than now. They are all heroes, and this book is our way of saying thank you. Contributors include: Dolly Alderton, Monica Ali, Kate Atkinson, Pam Ayres, David Baddiel, Johanna Basford, Mary Beard, William Boyd, Frankie Boyle, Jo Brand, Kevin Bridges, Alex Brooker, Charlie Brooker, Rob Brydon, Bill Bryson, Kathy Burke, Peter Capaldi, Jimmy Carr, Candice Carty-Williams, Lauren Child, Lee Child, Bridget Christie, Emilia Clarke, Rev Richard Coles, Daisy May Cooper, Jilly Cooper, Fearne Cotton, Juno Dawson, Kit de Waal, Victoria Derbyshire, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Chris Evans, Anne Fine, Martin Freeman, Dawn French, Stephen Fry, Mark Gatiss, Ricky Gervais, Professor Green, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, Mark Haddon, Matt Haig, The Hairy Bikers, Naomie Harris, Miranda Hart, Victoria Hislop, Nick Hornby, Sali Hughes, Konnie Huq, Marina Hyde, E L James, Greg James, Sir David Jason, Katarina Johnson-Thompson, Jackie Kay, Peter Kay, Lorraine Kelly, Marian Keyes, Shappi Khorsandi, Nish Kumar, Stewart Lee, Joanna Lumley, Lee Mack, Emily Maitlis, Andrew Marr, Catherine Mayer, Alexander McCall Smith, Paul McCartney, Sir Trevor McDonald, Caitlin Moran, Kate Mosse, Jojo Moyes, David Nicholls, John Niven, Graham Norton, Chris O'Dowd, Dermot O'Leary, Jamie Oliver, Sir Michael Palin, Maxine Peake, Sue Perkins, Katie Piper, Ian Rankin, Jonathan Ross, Ed Sheeran, Paul Sinha, Frank Skinner, Matthew Syed, Kae Tempest, David Tennant, Louis Theroux, Dame Emma Thompson, Sandi Toksvig, Stanley Tucci, KT Tunstall, Johnny Vegas, Danny Wallace, Dame Julie Walters, Phil Wang, Emma Watson, Mark Watson, Robert Webb, Irvine Welsh, Jack Whitehall, Josh Widdicombe, Dame Jacqueline Wilson, Greg Wise, Malala Yousafzai, Benjamin Zephaniah. A minimum of £3.09 from the sale of each book will be paid to NHS Charities Together and £0.16 will be paid to The Lullaby Trust.
'I am a junior doctor. It is 4 a.m. I have run arrest calls, treated life-threatening bleeding, held the hand of a young woman dying of cancer, scuttled down miles of dim corridors wanting to sob with sheer exhaustion, forgotten to eat, forgotten to drink, drawn on every fibre of strength that I possess to keep my patients safe from harm.' How does it feel to be spat out of medical school into a world of pain, loss and trauma that you feel wholly ill-equipped to handle? To be a medical novice who makes decisions which - if you get them wrong - might forever alter, or end, a person's life? To toughen up the hard way, through repeated exposure to life-and-death situations, until you are finally a match for them? In this heartfelt, deeply personal account of life as a junior doctor in today's health service, former television journalist turned doctor, Rachel Clarke, captures the extraordinary realities of ordinary life on the NHS front line. From the historic junior doctor strikes of 2016 to the 'humanitarian crisis' declared by the Red Cross, the overstretched health service is on the precipice, calling for junior doctors to draw on extraordinary reserves of what compelled them into medicine in the first place - and the value the NHS can least afford to lose - kindness. Your Life in My Hands is at once a powerful polemic on the systematic degradation of Britain's most vital public institution, and a love letter of optimism and hope to that same health service and those who support it. This extraordinary memoir offers a glimpse into a life spent between the operating room and the bedside, the mortuary and the doctors' mess, telling powerful truths about today's NHS frontline, and capturing with tenderness and humanity the highs and lows of a new doctor's first steps onto the wards in the context of a health service at breaking point - and what it means to be entrusted with carrying another's life in your hands. 'Eloquent and moving' - Henry Marsh 'There have been many books written by young doctors... but none comes close to Clarke's' - Sunday Times 'From the very heart of the NHS comes this brilliant insight into the continuing crisis in the health service. Rachel Clarke writes as the accomplished journalist she once was and as the leading junior doctor she now is - writing with humanity and compassion that at times reduced me to tears.' - Jon Snow, Channel 4 News 'Dr Clarke has written a blockbuster, a page-turner, a tear-jerker. This is a "from-the-heart" front-line account of the human cost of the wanton erosion of a magnificent ideal - healthcare free at the point of need, funded through public taxation, available to all - made real in the UK for near 70 years. It is a love-song for the wonderful National Health Service that has embodied - to an extent equalled nowhere in the world - the principle that healthcare is not a commodity but a great duty of state.' - Prof. Neena Modi, President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health 'A powerful account of life on the NHS frontline. If only Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt could see the passion behind the people in the NHS, they might stop treating them as the enemy, and understand that without them we don't have an NHS worth the name.' - Alastair Campbell
'Very funny and frank' Independent 'Reads like Scrubs: The Blog ... funny and awful in equal measure' Observer * * * * * * * The bestselling real life story of a hapless junior doctor, based on his columns written anonymously for the Telegraph. IF YOU'RE GOING to be ill, it's best to avoid the first Wednesday in August. This is the day when junior doctors graduate to their first placements and begin to face having to put into practice what they have spent the last six years learning. Starting on the evening before he begins work as a doctor, this book charts Max Pemberton's touching and funny journey through his first year in the NHS. Progressing from youthful idealism to frank bewilderment, Max realises how little his job is about 'saving people' and how much of his time is taken up by signing forms and trying to figure out all the important things no one has explained yet -- for example, the crucial question of how to tell whether someone is dead or not. Along the way, Max and his fellow fledgling doctors grapple with the complicated questions of life, love, mental health and how on earth to make time to do your laundry. All Creatures Great and Small meets Bridget Jones's Diary, this is a humorous and accessible peek into a world which you'd normally need a medical degree to witness. If you enjoy Trust Me, I'm a (Junior) Doctor, don't miss the follow-up titles Where Does It Hurt? and The Doctor Will See You Now.
‘Extraordinary’ Daily Mail As seen on BBC Breakfast Horrifying, heartbreaking and eye-opening, these are the stories, the patients and the cases that have characterised a career spent being a doctor behind bars.
The olden days were pretty fun if you liked wearing chainmail or chopping people's heads off but there was one TINY LITTLE problem back then . . . doctors didn't have the slightest clue about how our bodies worked. It's time to find out why Ancient Egyptians thought the brain was just a useless load of old stuffing that might as well be chucked in the bin, why teachers forced their pupils to smoke cigarettes, why hairdressers would cut off their customers' legs, and why people used to get paid for farting. (Unfortunately that's no longer a thing - sorry.) You'll get answers to questions like- Why did patients gargle with wee? How did a doctor save people's lives using a washing machine, a can of beans and some old sausages? What was the great stink? (No, it's not what doctors call your bum.) If you're sure you're ready, then pop a peg on your nose (there was a lot of stinky pus back then), pull on your wellies (there was a lot of poo there too), wash your hands (because they certainly didn't) and explore the gross and gruesome history of the human body in . . . KAY'S MARVELLOUS MEDICINE - the brand-new, hilarious book from bestselling, record-breaking author, Adam Kay. Praise for Kay's Anatomy- 'An enjoyably gross look at the human body. Hours of gruesome fun guaranteed' i 'Like listening to a teacher who makes pupils fall about' Sunday Times 'Totally brilliant!' Jacqueline Wilson 'Fun and informative' Malorie Blackman 'Very funny - this exciting book is bound to inspire the next generation of medics' Sunday Express
A New York Times Bestseller Shortlisted for both the Guardian First Book Prize and the Costa Book Award Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction A Finalist for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize A Finalist for the Wellcome Book Prize A Financial Times Best Book of the Year An Economist Best Book of the Year A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut into the stuff that creates thought, feeling, and reason? How do you live with the consequences of performing a potentially lifesaving operation when it all goes wrong? In neurosurgery, more than in any other branch of medicine, the doctor's oath to "do no harm" holds a bitter irony. Operations on the brain carry grave risks. Every day, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh must make agonizing decisions, often in the face of great urgency and uncertainty. If you believe that brain surgery is a precise and exquisite craft, practiced by calm and detached doctors, this gripping, brutally honest account will make you think again. With astonishing compassion and candor, Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets, and the moments of black humor that characterize a brain surgeon's life. Do No Harm provides unforgettable insight into the countless human dramas that take place in a busy modern hospital. Above all, it is a lesson in the need for hope when faced with life's most difficult decisions.
