April 27, 2025 • 21 mins
Adam Kay is a BAFTA-winning author, screenwriter, comedian, and former junior doctor, best known for his brutally funny memoir This is Going to Hurt. The book became a global sensation, spending over a year at number one in the Sunday Times bestseller list, selling millions of copies, and being adapted into a hit BBC/AMC series starring Ben Whishaw, which earned Adam a BAFTA for Best Drama Writer. He’s also one of the UK’s bestselling children’s authors, with titles like Kay’s Anatomy, the fastest-selling kids’ non-fiction book of the decade.
Born in Brighton and raised in a Jewish family, Adam is the son of a doctor and grew up with three siblings. He studied medicine at Imperial College London and worked as a doctor for six years before leaving the profession after a traumatic experience in obstetrics. During medical school, he began writing and performing, eventually co-founding the musical comedy group Amateur Transplants, whose viral hit “London Underground” gained cult status.
Adam’s live shows—blending humour, heartbreak and insider medical stories—have packed out venues across the UK, from the Edinburgh Fringe to the West End. His most recent show, Undoctored, was the top-selling show of the 2023 Fringe. Adam is a sought-after speaker and TV guest, equally at home making people laugh or offering sharp insights.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio,
Real Conversation, Real Connection. It's Real Life with John Cowan
on News Talk s ed B.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Today.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Welcome to Real Life.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
My guest tonight is Adam Kay, a former doctor who's
written seven books and sold five million copies. In his
first book was never meant to be a book for others.
It was his diary that he kept as a doctor,
and it's titled This Is Going to Hurt and it's
sold three million copies. And Adam's adapted that to a
multi bafter A winning comedy drama series for BBC and
(00:53):
he joins me now online from Melbourne. Welcome Adam.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Hello, I Speecie.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
How are you doing. You're touring around Ozzie At the moment.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
I'll be totally honest. I'm very tired.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
I've got two two year old and we've just come
off a very long flight from from London, so I'm
feeling delicate the truthful answer.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I sometimes think that the hours that you must have
worked as a junior doctor, doing one hundred hour weeks
and things like that, must be good preparation for parenthood.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
Yeah, no, that is that is very good preparation. It's
interesting because people assume that I'll be sort of I'll
be sort of very knowledgeable about you know, about about
kids in their health because I used to work on
this labor ardens, you know, being doing et ceterrics. I
know nothing about about children beyond the first seven seconds
of life, which is when they get handed over to
(01:46):
the to the middle life of tour, you know, and
back to their mum. And so yeah, no, I'm really
really in the deep end.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
So you're not an anxious parent, you know, thinking of
a hundred different symptoms, one hundred different conditions and things
any symptom could represent.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
No, I think I think I'm relatively measured.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
My husband's a pretty anxious person and so I sort of.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Have to offset that a bit.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
But I've been very careful not to be my kids
doctor and just to be their parents. And you know,
anytime we're worried, the answer, the answer isn't just to
work out.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
If it's something.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
The answer is actually to speak to a proper professional.
I've not worked on a ward for fourteen years, and
I'm not sure how good I was even back then,
So it's quite a roll of the dice.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Ask me for medical advice.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Well, I'll refrain from bringing up some conditions that I'd
like to consult you with.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
But now.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Your show, you've been doing this now for a while.
I think three hundred thousand or more people have seen
the show called This is Going to Hurt. And I'll
give details later on a bit weird. People in New
Zealand can see it. What can people expect when they
come to your show?
Speaker 4 (03:05):
So, if anyone's read one of my books or seen
TV show, it's it's along those lines. It's me talking
about my stories from the from the wards, which are
mostly funny slash belly slash disgusting, and quite a lot
of them are disgusting, let's be honest. And and I'm
(03:29):
talking about this stuff. And while it's like ninety five
percent funny as a show, there's also a bit of
giving people some to think about on their on their
journey back home, particularly in terms of how we look
after our healthcare professionals, looking after the people who are
looking after us.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
So, yeah, that's what my show is.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
It's some stories people might recognize from from my books
and some stories that haven't been haven't been published like
that before.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
But yeah, of course, you know, when people think of hospitals,
they often think of their own conditions, their own experience
of hospitals, and the loved ones going through those things.
I don't suppose many people give a thought to how
their conditions and experiences impact the doctors dealing them, dealing
with them. It's something doctor, is there something doctors get
(04:19):
trained to handle? You know, the fact that you're dealing
with people's life and death stuff and this is going
to impact you as well as a doctor.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
I mean, it's a very good question.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
So obviously, communication skills of the cornerstone of medicine. And
of the six years I spent a medical school and
a full afternoon a week for six years were spent
to communications.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Not once in any.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Of those lessons over all those years did anyone say, oh,
by the way, you're going to have some bad days yourself,
and here's some ways of coping with them.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
And so, in the absence of being taught a.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Way to cope, everyone's improvisers with their own methods. And
it's some healthier coping mechanisms, some less healthy. And I
think writing down these diaries that became my book, are.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Were my form of coping?
Speaker 4 (05:13):
And you ask about whether people you know think about
that as the you know, as the patient, the answer
is essentially never. And just as like a minor example
I did, I did a clinic, an anti data clinic,
in one particular hospital many years ago, and it was
every Wednesday evening. I did this clinic for a year.
(05:34):
It meant to be just the afternoon, but it always
ran into the evening. This usual thing of a mismatch
of number of staff and number of patients meant that
a clinic that should have ended at five always ended.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
At seven pm, eight pm, and you know.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
And I spent a lot of my time apologizing to
patients that it was running so late, and you know,
and they and they'd be upset because it meant that,
you know, there was a problem with a babysitter or
the cars.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Running off the meat or whatever.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
Not once in a year of doing that clinic did
anyone say, oh, you probably don't want to be here either,
but which I didn't.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
But you don't think of.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Your as someone you don't like to think of your doctor,
someone who's human, who's got this other life, because humans
make mistakes and so it's much easier to think of
your doctor as just this sort of this sort of
non human person who's just there when you need them
in the hospital.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Well, there you go, Listeners, the next time that you're
confronted by a late running appointment at your medical professional,
express some empathy for the doctor as well. So I
suppose there's a mystique around doctors. Maybe doctors cultivate that themselves,
and we like to think that they're going to swaan
away after disappointment and pack their wallet full of money
(06:50):
and jump in the Alexis and drive home to the mansion.
But I very much get the impression from your book
and TV show that that's not the life of especially
a junior doctor.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
No, certain and maybe if you're a plastic surgeon working
in you know, in San Diego, then then maybe that's
what your life looked like. But it was certainly nothing
that I could I ever spotted. In fact, I was
when I was putting these my direst together into book
in the first place, I found sort of various pace
(07:23):
steps from when I was when I was working, and
the longest week I worked was ninety seven hours. And
so even though you know when I was a dune doctor.
You know, you weren't. You weren't making nothing. It wasn't
it wasn't the last fortunate. But you know, if you're
comfortably were able to, you know, sort of live a
liver a life. But when you divided it by the
(07:47):
by the hours, I was earning less than the parking
meter outside my outside of my ward.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Right, Yeah, I wonder why why do they subject doctors
to that grueling entree into their professional life? I mentioned
there is a financial side, I don't know, want to
pay too much for doctors. But is there almost like
the ruling class and the medical proficion thing, this is
good for the junior doctors, to make them so exhausted,
(08:17):
to weed out the weaklings, to toughen them up.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Is there a sense of that? Do you think I
quite know what it is.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
I think there's a lot of sense of you know,
well I had to do it, didn't do me any harm.
And look it was in this sort of baptism and fire.
Working enormous number of hours. You do learn very quickly,
you know, you upscale fast if you're working all this,
But it's not the right way to do it. Was
there was one instance I remember so I spent most
of my career working on working on labor boards, and
(08:48):
you don't get an awful lot of spare time if
you're the doctor working overnight on a labor board. But
sometimes things go quiet for twenty minutes, and there was
a there was a room that we could disappear off
to and have a kit, you know, just to get it,
you know, until the bleetnecks goes off. And then management
in there and at wisdom decided that if you're at work,
(09:11):
you must be at work and you must not be asleep,
and so they got rid of this facility for doctors
to be able to get a bit of rest. Just
in understand, I felt like saying, you know, to one
of these nameless, faceless managers, like, if this was you
requiring this as air in section, if this was your
wife requiring this as air in section, would you rather
(09:33):
that the doctor performing it has been allowed to have
twenty minutes sleep at some point during the shift, or
being forced to stay awake.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
But again, it's not thinking of these.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
People as human beings with very human requirements.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
You said that some of these older doctors might say
it didn't do me any harm, but that's not the case.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
It harms doctors. It absolutely harms doctors.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
And I think people who say it didn't do me
any harm, whether it's referring to being hit as a
kid or going to boarding school or anything like this,
it genuinely did do them some harm.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
This is one of those instances.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, I personally have met and I have known two
doctors that took their own life. And it's not uncommon. Really,
is that the stress building up and bursting out in
some way?
Speaker 4 (10:28):
It really isn't this unhealthy approach to one's mental health.
Not talking about it means that this is a worldwide problem.
In the United Kingdom, one doctor takes their life every
three weeks. One nurse takes their life every single week.
And I know that, you know, the increase in suicide
rates amongst healthcare professionals is a worldwide, worldwide phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Okay, if you've just joined us, my guest tonight is
former doctor Adam Kay, who's now a comedian, written some
brilliant books, is doing a show that he's bringing to
New Zealand soon.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I'll give you details later.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
And even though we've left this topic on a very
somber note, he is actually very very funny, and so
we'll be coming back talking to Adam. Doctor Adam Kane,
do you still call yourself a doctor?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
No? No.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
If I'm trying to get myself an upgrade on a flight,
than I do, but that never works.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Former doctor Adam Kay will be joining me after this break.
This is real life on news Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on News
Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Just get worse.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And yes, welcome back to real life.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
I'm John Cown.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
My guess is Adam Kay, an author, a comedian, a
TV producer and a former doctor. And that music that
we're listening to, it's it's related to the TV show
that you produced.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Yes, so Jarvis Park her from from from Pulp.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
I don't know how well Pulp exported to New Zealand,
but one of my favorite, my favorite bands from schooling university.
Jarvist of the soundtracks of the show, which was which
was a proper pinch me moment, and that that was
the title track.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
From the series.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
I see her producer nodding vigorously when you mentioned Pulp,
So yes, it certainly known by some people here, even
that I'm not quite of the advantage but the show
itself based on yourself. This must be a very strange
experience seeing someone playing yourself.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
I mean, it's absolutely sure. It's one of these standard
dinner party questions, isn't it? Who would play you? And
the thing of your life? And then suddenly were sort
of sat around in meeting rooms having this exact discussion
who should who should play me?
Speaker 3 (12:54):
And the character in the in.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
The TV show is he's tricky, He's a difficult person.
And you know, I had the options, you know, when
I wrote the scripts to make the character of some
sort of amazing superhero diving into all these scenarios and
saving the day and saving the world, but actually it
being a drama, I thought it was more interesting if
it was someone who's a bit trickier. But I cast
(13:21):
Ben Wishaw in the in the leads role, who's absolutely
phenomenal and and you want a.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Baster for Best Actor for his portrayal, which is which is?
Speaker 4 (13:30):
I thought extremely well well deserved, and obviously in Curtin
Ben Musher, I cast an extremely handsome man there. I thought,
if if millions of people watching this show kind of
think that that I'm an asshole, they should probably think
I'm a very handsome asshole.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
If people were to watch the show, this is going
to hit, they can trick it down on PB and
Z streaming sites and it's I've only seen snippets of it.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
It's very funny.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
It's certainly got those diagnoses that in your actor's soul.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Is that very accurate?
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Were you prone at times to anger frustration.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
That you know?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
I mean, I don't de take any event and talking
to you now, but we're as a doctor. Were you
a harder person?
Speaker 3 (14:21):
That's an interesting question.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
I think it was all very much dialed up for
the TV show to make it sort of a more
more interesting watch. I think I certainly struggled a lot
with with the job. You know, working on Labeled has
the most enormous highs. You know, you're involved in the
most magical moments in a you know, in a family's
you know, entire lives, and it's a huge privilege to
(14:46):
be in that role. And nothing beats the feeling of,
you know, saving a mother or a baby's life.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
I mean, that is that's an incredible thing to do.
But what I hadn't realized.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Going into the job is that the height of the
hinds is always set off by the depth of the lows,
and the bad days at work are absolutely devastating and
and so I think the main struggle I had at
work were, you know, when things didn't go to plan,
and you know, the times that you find yourself, you know,
crying in the locker room.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
After a shift.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, no, that's that's very tough. And the show does
bring that out. And one of the things I did
watch preparing for this interview was a bunch of doctors
watching your show and commenting how authentic it was, and
there were tears in their eyes as are watching some
of it. And so it really does bring across that
(15:42):
how emotionally straining being in the medical profession is. And
is that why you left being a doctor?
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah? It is too hard, essentially.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Yes, So I was working on a label board. I
was the most senior doctor on the shift one weekend
and like, call you what from every case as a
healthy mom and a healthy baby, And this is one
of these horrible instances when we ended up with neither
of those two things. And there's this culture of medicine
(16:12):
or a bloody doctor, bloody, get on with it.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
And so there was no mention of a debrief afterwards.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
I wasn't off at a second off work, I wasn't
off at a minute of counseling, and I wasn't coping afterwards,
and I essentially realized that I couldn't face that kind
of thing ever happening to me ever again, it was
just too damaging to me, and so I maybe I'm
(16:39):
just made of the wrong stuff, don't have thick enough
arm or whatever it is. So I decided to step
away for a few months to try and work out
if there was a branch of medicine I could, you know,
I could go back into that was maybe slightly lower octane.
And fourteen years later, I'm still on my three months off.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Okay, is it anything that could have saved your career?
I mean, you've got a brilliant career now probably even
it's probably a lot more fun and even raw rewarding.
But see anything that the system could have done for
you that could have helped you as a at.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Absolutely So, I mean, going right back to recruiting doctors
at at medical school, I think there can be more
honesty about what the profession involves, you know, I think
you know, if you were to go for an operation,
you know, you do what's known as informed consent, where
you're told this is the benefits of the procedure, and
(17:36):
here's the risk of having the anesthetic of you know,
damaging other structures, bleeding, infection, and blah blah blah, And
that's called informed consent. So you see both sides of
the coin and you decide you want to do it.
I think when people are going to medicine, there is
you're never shown the other side of the of the coin.
I think that, you know, right back to recruiting doctors,
it shouldn't be based on you know, your exam results
(17:57):
and you know and things and things like that. It
should be really interview based are you the right person
for this for this job, and right the way through
to you know, when the bad thing happen. There is
loads of evidence about how to deal with the bad days.
You know, coming back to your question, they should be
taught to coping mechanisms. There's loads of evidence. Doctors use evidence.
(18:19):
If you if you go to the doctor with your asthma,
they don't just sort of have a guess. It's not
done on a whim. It's done on proper research, one hopes.
But when it comes to their own health. There is
loads of evidence about you know, how to how to
look after someone when they've had.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
A bad day.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
You know, whether it's counseling, whether it's time out, and
there's even evidence for things you know, there's evidence for
like for drinking tea, there's evidence for meditation.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
There's all these things that you can you can offer
of all different levels.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
But instead the culture in medicine is just that you
plow on because that's what you do. But you can
always put your feelings down into a box. You can
always and it does work in the short term. But
if you do that, that box will always open at
some time. You have absolutely no control for whether it does. So, yeah,
there were various points along my alonmaker I think where
(19:15):
more could have been done, and I think places where
the medical profession needs to be very honest with itself
about how it can improve.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
If you're wanting to catch Adam's show, this is going
to hurt. And by the way, we've been talking pretty
serious topics to that. His show is first and foremost
brilliant entertainment and so if you're wanting to catch him,
he's got shows in Auckland, Wellington, christ Church, Dunedin and
Hamilton between May twelfth and May eighteenth, and you can
book on Boem Presents dot com, Bohm Presents dot com.
(19:46):
And I'm sure that you won't regret spending an evening
with Adam Kay Adam, it's been brilliant talking with you.
When you come over here, I hope you make lots
of noise advocating for our health services. And we're going
to go out on perhaps the most inappropriate song that
you've picked as a concluding song.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Oh absolutely, yeah, this is the song you really don't
want to be to come on the radio during an
operation in theater cutting crew with I just died in
your arms.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Tonight has been brilliant talking with you. Thank you so
much for taking the time. Thank you nice must so much.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Jeez For more from News Talks ed B listen live
(21:28):
on air or online and keep our shows with you
wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio,
Real Conversation, Real Connection. It's Real Life with John Cowan
on News Talk s ed B.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Today.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Welcome to Real Life.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
My guest tonight is Adam Kay, a former doctor who's
written seven books and sold five million copies. In his
first book was never meant to be a book for others.
It was his diary that he kept as a doctor,
and it's titled This Is Going to Hurt and it's
sold three million copies. And Adam's adapted that to a
multi bafter A winning comedy drama series for BBC and
(00:53):
he joins me now online from Melbourne. Welcome Adam.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Hello, I Speecie.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
How are you doing. You're touring around Ozzie At the moment.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
I'll be totally honest. I'm very tired.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
I've got two two year old and we've just come
off a very long flight from from London, so I'm
feeling delicate the truthful answer.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I sometimes think that the hours that you must have
worked as a junior doctor, doing one hundred hour weeks
and things like that, must be good preparation for parenthood.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
Yeah, no, that is that is very good preparation. It's
interesting because people assume that I'll be sort of I'll
be sort of very knowledgeable about you know, about about
kids in their health because I used to work on
this labor ardens, you know, being doing et ceterrics. I
know nothing about about children beyond the first seven seconds
of life, which is when they get handed over to
(01:46):
the to the middle life of tour, you know, and
back to their mum. And so yeah, no, I'm really
really in the deep end.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
So you're not an anxious parent, you know, thinking of
a hundred different symptoms, one hundred different conditions and things
any symptom could represent.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
No, I think I think I'm relatively measured.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
My husband's a pretty anxious person and so I sort of.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Have to offset that a bit.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
But I've been very careful not to be my kids
doctor and just to be their parents. And you know,
anytime we're worried, the answer, the answer isn't just to
work out.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
If it's something.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
The answer is actually to speak to a proper professional.
I've not worked on a ward for fourteen years, and
I'm not sure how good I was even back then,
So it's quite a roll of the dice.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Ask me for medical advice.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Well, I'll refrain from bringing up some conditions that I'd
like to consult you with.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
But now.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Your show, you've been doing this now for a while.
I think three hundred thousand or more people have seen
the show called This is Going to Hurt. And I'll
give details later on a bit weird. People in New
Zealand can see it. What can people expect when they
come to your show?
Speaker 4 (03:05):
So, if anyone's read one of my books or seen
TV show, it's it's along those lines. It's me talking
about my stories from the from the wards, which are
mostly funny slash belly slash disgusting, and quite a lot
of them are disgusting, let's be honest. And and I'm
(03:29):
talking about this stuff. And while it's like ninety five
percent funny as a show, there's also a bit of
giving people some to think about on their on their
journey back home, particularly in terms of how we look
after our healthcare professionals, looking after the people who are
looking after us.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
So, yeah, that's what my show is.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
It's some stories people might recognize from from my books
and some stories that haven't been haven't been published like
that before.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
But yeah, of course, you know, when people think of hospitals,
they often think of their own conditions, their own experience
of hospitals, and the loved ones going through those things.
I don't suppose many people give a thought to how
their conditions and experiences impact the doctors dealing them, dealing
with them. It's something doctor, is there something doctors get
(04:19):
trained to handle? You know, the fact that you're dealing
with people's life and death stuff and this is going
to impact you as well as a doctor.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
I mean, it's a very good question.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
So obviously, communication skills of the cornerstone of medicine. And
of the six years I spent a medical school and
a full afternoon a week for six years were spent
to communications.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Not once in any.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Of those lessons over all those years did anyone say, oh,
by the way, you're going to have some bad days yourself,
and here's some ways of coping with them.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
And so, in the absence of being taught a.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Way to cope, everyone's improvisers with their own methods. And
it's some healthier coping mechanisms, some less healthy. And I
think writing down these diaries that became my book, are.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Were my form of coping?
Speaker 4 (05:13):
And you ask about whether people you know think about
that as the you know, as the patient, the answer
is essentially never. And just as like a minor example
I did, I did a clinic, an anti data clinic,
in one particular hospital many years ago, and it was
every Wednesday evening. I did this clinic for a year.
(05:34):
It meant to be just the afternoon, but it always
ran into the evening. This usual thing of a mismatch
of number of staff and number of patients meant that
a clinic that should have ended at five always ended.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
At seven pm, eight pm, and you know.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
And I spent a lot of my time apologizing to
patients that it was running so late, and you know,
and they and they'd be upset because it meant that,
you know, there was a problem with a babysitter or
the cars.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Running off the meat or whatever.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
Not once in a year of doing that clinic did
anyone say, oh, you probably don't want to be here either,
but which I didn't.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
But you don't think of.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Your as someone you don't like to think of your doctor,
someone who's human, who's got this other life, because humans
make mistakes and so it's much easier to think of
your doctor as just this sort of this sort of
non human person who's just there when you need them
in the hospital.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Well, there you go, Listeners, the next time that you're
confronted by a late running appointment at your medical professional,
express some empathy for the doctor as well. So I
suppose there's a mystique around doctors. Maybe doctors cultivate that themselves,
and we like to think that they're going to swaan
away after disappointment and pack their wallet full of money
(06:50):
and jump in the Alexis and drive home to the mansion.
But I very much get the impression from your book
and TV show that that's not the life of especially
a junior doctor.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
No, certain and maybe if you're a plastic surgeon working
in you know, in San Diego, then then maybe that's
what your life looked like. But it was certainly nothing
that I could I ever spotted. In fact, I was
when I was putting these my direst together into book
in the first place, I found sort of various pace
(07:23):
steps from when I was when I was working, and
the longest week I worked was ninety seven hours. And
so even though you know when I was a dune doctor.
You know, you weren't. You weren't making nothing. It wasn't
it wasn't the last fortunate. But you know, if you're
comfortably were able to, you know, sort of live a
liver a life. But when you divided it by the
(07:47):
by the hours, I was earning less than the parking
meter outside my outside of my ward.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Right, Yeah, I wonder why why do they subject doctors
to that grueling entree into their professional life? I mentioned
there is a financial side, I don't know, want to
pay too much for doctors. But is there almost like
the ruling class and the medical proficion thing, this is
good for the junior doctors, to make them so exhausted,
(08:17):
to weed out the weaklings, to toughen them up.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
Is there a sense of that? Do you think I
quite know what it is.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
I think there's a lot of sense of you know,
well I had to do it, didn't do me any harm.
And look it was in this sort of baptism and fire.
Working enormous number of hours. You do learn very quickly,
you know, you upscale fast if you're working all this,
But it's not the right way to do it. Was
there was one instance I remember so I spent most
of my career working on working on labor boards, and
(08:48):
you don't get an awful lot of spare time if
you're the doctor working overnight on a labor board. But
sometimes things go quiet for twenty minutes, and there was
a there was a room that we could disappear off
to and have a kit, you know, just to get it,
you know, until the bleetnecks goes off. And then management
in there and at wisdom decided that if you're at work,
(09:11):
you must be at work and you must not be asleep,
and so they got rid of this facility for doctors
to be able to get a bit of rest. Just
in understand, I felt like saying, you know, to one
of these nameless, faceless managers, like, if this was you
requiring this as air in section, if this was your
wife requiring this as air in section, would you rather
(09:33):
that the doctor performing it has been allowed to have
twenty minutes sleep at some point during the shift, or
being forced to stay awake.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
But again, it's not thinking of these.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
People as human beings with very human requirements.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
You said that some of these older doctors might say
it didn't do me any harm, but that's not the case.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
It harms doctors. It absolutely harms doctors.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
And I think people who say it didn't do me
any harm, whether it's referring to being hit as a
kid or going to boarding school or anything like this,
it genuinely did do them some harm.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
This is one of those instances.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, I personally have met and I have known two
doctors that took their own life. And it's not uncommon. Really,
is that the stress building up and bursting out in
some way?
Speaker 4 (10:28):
It really isn't this unhealthy approach to one's mental health.
Not talking about it means that this is a worldwide problem.
In the United Kingdom, one doctor takes their life every
three weeks. One nurse takes their life every single week.
And I know that, you know, the increase in suicide
rates amongst healthcare professionals is a worldwide, worldwide phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Okay, if you've just joined us, my guest tonight is
former doctor Adam Kay, who's now a comedian, written some
brilliant books, is doing a show that he's bringing to
New Zealand soon.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I'll give you details later.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
And even though we've left this topic on a very
somber note, he is actually very very funny, and so
we'll be coming back talking to Adam. Doctor Adam Kane,
do you still call yourself a doctor?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
No? No.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
If I'm trying to get myself an upgrade on a flight,
than I do, but that never works.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Former doctor Adam Kay will be joining me after this break.
This is real life on news Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on News
Talk ZEDB.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Just get worse.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And yes, welcome back to real life.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
I'm John Cown.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
My guess is Adam Kay, an author, a comedian, a
TV producer and a former doctor. And that music that
we're listening to, it's it's related to the TV show
that you produced.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Yes, so Jarvis Park her from from from Pulp.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
I don't know how well Pulp exported to New Zealand,
but one of my favorite, my favorite bands from schooling university.
Jarvist of the soundtracks of the show, which was which
was a proper pinch me moment, and that that was
the title track.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
From the series.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
I see her producer nodding vigorously when you mentioned Pulp,
So yes, it certainly known by some people here, even
that I'm not quite of the advantage but the show
itself based on yourself. This must be a very strange
experience seeing someone playing yourself.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
I mean, it's absolutely sure. It's one of these standard
dinner party questions, isn't it? Who would play you? And
the thing of your life? And then suddenly were sort
of sat around in meeting rooms having this exact discussion
who should who should play me?
Speaker 3 (12:54):
And the character in the in.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
The TV show is he's tricky, He's a difficult person.
And you know, I had the options, you know, when
I wrote the scripts to make the character of some
sort of amazing superhero diving into all these scenarios and
saving the day and saving the world, but actually it
being a drama, I thought it was more interesting if
it was someone who's a bit trickier. But I cast
(13:21):
Ben Wishaw in the in the leads role, who's absolutely
phenomenal and and you want a.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Baster for Best Actor for his portrayal, which is which is?
Speaker 4 (13:30):
I thought extremely well well deserved, and obviously in Curtin
Ben Musher, I cast an extremely handsome man there. I thought,
if if millions of people watching this show kind of
think that that I'm an asshole, they should probably think
I'm a very handsome asshole.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
If people were to watch the show, this is going
to hit, they can trick it down on PB and
Z streaming sites and it's I've only seen snippets of it.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
It's very funny.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
It's certainly got those diagnoses that in your actor's soul.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Is that very accurate?
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Were you prone at times to anger frustration.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
That you know?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
I mean, I don't de take any event and talking
to you now, but we're as a doctor. Were you
a harder person?
Speaker 3 (14:21):
That's an interesting question.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
I think it was all very much dialed up for
the TV show to make it sort of a more
more interesting watch. I think I certainly struggled a lot
with with the job. You know, working on Labeled has
the most enormous highs. You know, you're involved in the
most magical moments in a you know, in a family's
you know, entire lives, and it's a huge privilege to
(14:46):
be in that role. And nothing beats the feeling of,
you know, saving a mother or a baby's life.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
I mean, that is that's an incredible thing to do.
But what I hadn't realized.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Going into the job is that the height of the
hinds is always set off by the depth of the lows,
and the bad days at work are absolutely devastating and
and so I think the main struggle I had at
work were, you know, when things didn't go to plan,
and you know, the times that you find yourself, you know,
crying in the locker room.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
After a shift.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, no, that's that's very tough. And the show does
bring that out. And one of the things I did
watch preparing for this interview was a bunch of doctors
watching your show and commenting how authentic it was, and
there were tears in their eyes as are watching some
of it. And so it really does bring across that
(15:42):
how emotionally straining being in the medical profession is. And
is that why you left being a doctor?
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah? It is too hard, essentially.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
Yes, So I was working on a label board. I
was the most senior doctor on the shift one weekend
and like, call you what from every case as a
healthy mom and a healthy baby, And this is one
of these horrible instances when we ended up with neither
of those two things. And there's this culture of medicine
(16:12):
or a bloody doctor, bloody, get on with it.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
And so there was no mention of a debrief afterwards.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
I wasn't off at a second off work, I wasn't
off at a minute of counseling, and I wasn't coping afterwards,
and I essentially realized that I couldn't face that kind
of thing ever happening to me ever again, it was
just too damaging to me, and so I maybe I'm
(16:39):
just made of the wrong stuff, don't have thick enough
arm or whatever it is. So I decided to step
away for a few months to try and work out
if there was a branch of medicine I could, you know,
I could go back into that was maybe slightly lower octane.
And fourteen years later, I'm still on my three months off.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Okay, is it anything that could have saved your career?
I mean, you've got a brilliant career now probably even
it's probably a lot more fun and even raw rewarding.
But see anything that the system could have done for
you that could have helped you as a at.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Absolutely So, I mean, going right back to recruiting doctors
at at medical school, I think there can be more
honesty about what the profession involves, you know, I think
you know, if you were to go for an operation,
you know, you do what's known as informed consent, where
you're told this is the benefits of the procedure, and
(17:36):
here's the risk of having the anesthetic of you know,
damaging other structures, bleeding, infection, and blah blah blah, And
that's called informed consent. So you see both sides of
the coin and you decide you want to do it.
I think when people are going to medicine, there is
you're never shown the other side of the of the coin.
I think that, you know, right back to recruiting doctors,
it shouldn't be based on you know, your exam results
(17:57):
and you know and things and things like that. It
should be really interview based are you the right person
for this for this job, and right the way through
to you know, when the bad thing happen. There is
loads of evidence about how to deal with the bad days.
You know, coming back to your question, they should be
taught to coping mechanisms. There's loads of evidence. Doctors use evidence.
(18:19):
If you if you go to the doctor with your asthma,
they don't just sort of have a guess. It's not
done on a whim. It's done on proper research, one hopes.
But when it comes to their own health. There is
loads of evidence about you know, how to how to
look after someone when they've had.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
A bad day.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
You know, whether it's counseling, whether it's time out, and
there's even evidence for things you know, there's evidence for
like for drinking tea, there's evidence for meditation.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
There's all these things that you can you can offer
of all different levels.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
But instead the culture in medicine is just that you
plow on because that's what you do. But you can
always put your feelings down into a box. You can
always and it does work in the short term. But
if you do that, that box will always open at
some time. You have absolutely no control for whether it does. So, yeah,
there were various points along my alonmaker I think where
(19:15):
more could have been done, and I think places where
the medical profession needs to be very honest with itself
about how it can improve.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
If you're wanting to catch Adam's show, this is going
to hurt. And by the way, we've been talking pretty
serious topics to that. His show is first and foremost
brilliant entertainment and so if you're wanting to catch him,
he's got shows in Auckland, Wellington, christ Church, Dunedin and
Hamilton between May twelfth and May eighteenth, and you can
book on Boem Presents dot com, Bohm Presents dot com.
(19:46):
And I'm sure that you won't regret spending an evening
with Adam Kay Adam, it's been brilliant talking with you.
When you come over here, I hope you make lots
of noise advocating for our health services. And we're going
to go out on perhaps the most inappropriate song that
you've picked as a concluding song.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Oh absolutely, yeah, this is the song you really don't
want to be to come on the radio during an
operation in theater cutting crew with I just died in
your arms.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Tonight has been brilliant talking with you. Thank you so
much for taking the time. Thank you nice must so much.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Jeez For more from News Talks ed B listen live
(21:28):
on air or online and keep our shows with you
wherever you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio
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