This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Young Doctor

by Adam Kay

Discharging a patient home after laparoscopy,* I sign her off work for two weeks. She offers me a tenner to sign her off for a month. I laugh, but she’s serious and ups her offer to fifteen quid. I suggest she see her GP if she’s not feeling up to work after a fortnight. I clearly need to dress smarter if that’s the level of bribe I’m attracting. On the way home I wonder how much she’d have needed to offer before I said yes. Depressingly, I put it somewhere around fifty pounds.

I told a patient that his MRI wouldn’t be until next week and he threatened to break both my legs. My first thought was Well, it’ll be a couple of weeks off work. I was this close to offering to find him a baseball bat.

Trying to work out a seventy-year-old lady’s alcohol consumption to record in the notes. I’ve established that wine is her poison. Me: And how much wine do you drink per day, would you say? Patient: About three bottles on a good day. Me: Okay . . . and on a bad day? Patient: On a bad day I only manage one.