I just cannot describe how much I enjoyed this book. It was both side splittingly hilarious and heartbreaking. This is one of those books that you need to tab and sticky note your favourite passages for later on. As I am in the medical profession myself, A LOT of things in this book ring soooo true ! This is written in diary entries from the time he was in medical school until he decided to quit after about 10 years as a junior doctor.

Here are some of my favourite examples in the book :

Pg. 161: “More than once I’ve catheterized a woman during labour only for her partner to ask if that isn’t going to stop the baby from coming out”.

Pg. 202-203: Mother thinks that a vitamin k shot will give her baby “arthritis”.

Pg. 212-123: Just read the whole thing, you won’t believe how stupid this guy was/is; it involves a fan (that is all that I will say).

Pg. 220: This is one of his better rants about how truly stressing and exhausting it is to switch from day to night shifts. Try running on basically fumes on a hospital unit, see how well you do!

The edition that I read had some extra diary entries that weren’t in the original that were good as well. At the end, the author writes about his book tour across the U.K where he was overwhelmed with the amount of people who loved his book and were asking about ways that they could help support the NHS. I loved that he said the obvious (go to social media, write your local MP, etc) and maybe what seems obvious to at least the ones in this “industry”; LISTEN to us rant or offer to a shoulder to cry on when it becomes too much sometimes.

Like one of the blurbs on the book says, if you only read one book this year, please let be this one!