Adam Kay: The funny side of medicine
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ค. 2024
- Adam Kay is the author of one of the most successful books of the last couple of years, 'This is Going to Hurt', which is based upon his diaries from his former career as a doctor before he quit medicine.
(Subscribe: bit.ly/C4_News_Subscribe)
He wrote down his often hilarious experiences as a way to cope with the stresses and emotions of his job.
He talks to Krishnan about how the world of medicine needs to change, challenging politicians and his worries for the future of the NHS.
-------
Watch more of our explainer series here - th-cam.com/users/playlist?list...
Get more news at our site - www.channel4.com/news/
Follow us:
Facebook - / channel4news
Twitter - / channel4news
It’s a shame he’s not a doctor anymore. He’s very personable. He obviously wasn’t supported enough post his traumatic event. Sad that the profession will lose many like him. Our doctors and nurses need looking after too.
I do not think it is a shame. I think it is wonderful that he is being completely honest with himself and has found his true niche. He is helping doctors , nurses and other professionals by giving them a voice and help us realise how tough the job is. He shouldn't be putting himself through what he cannot handle; emotionally he cannot cope despite being an excellent doctor. He is a very sensitive guy and it is not one, two or three events that made him quit. It appears that everything was too intense and being a doctor for him meant he couldn't strike a healthy balance in his life.
I really agree with him about choosing doctors based on more than getting straight A's at A level.I'm sure there would be many suitable candidates for entering medicine who might just have not gone to the best schools or who have had doctors in their family.We really do need to be drawing doctors from a wider social pool and with emotional intelligence and skills,they also need to be supported so much more emotionally.Not to forget what he also says about the understaffing and lack of investment generally in bringing our health service up to date for the 21st century
It’s the same with nurses.
@@suew000 which they've made a degree subject too
@@suew000 yes I’m a psych nurse. And there are so many people in the profession unsuited to the job, but sailed through purely on academic intelligence
We need very smart doctors. If they only get 60-70% correct on the exam it might mean they make more mistakes - poor medical procedures.
Just finished reading the book half an hour ago. A great book. A must read!!
As an O&G trainee, I found your book very accurate. Brought me to tears. Got my wife to read it so she would understand my work and it’s effects, better. I agree about the lack of support. I’m dyslexic and am being judged on it. My mood is low and my stress is high. Thinking of quitting and going to something less stressful like A&E...
Good luck and I hope you're doing well and happier with whatever decision you made 💖
If you’ve spent time on an understaffed labour ward, and lacking support, then A&E seems a reprieve!
@Caroline Storey I have been. But the past 48hours have been getting tough. Yesterday I had to cover two jobs, the doctor whom was meant to be with me is in Covid isolation. The locum that was booked to cover, didn’t turn up. This morning we had to perform a Caesarean section on a mother with Covid delivering the baby many weeks early, otherwise they both would have died. The mother is still not in a great way. There are other cases similarly stressful. I came home in tears.
@Caroline Storey I’m off till Monday now. Having lots of cuddles from my kids.
Unlike 7 months ago, when I was pretty down, I’ve moved hospitals and have an amazingly supportive team, and ES. So while it’s tough for us all, we will get through it together.
@@martiganuk147 I hope you're doing ok now Martigan and have made the right choices for yourself and your family. Wishing you well, take care :)
I just finished reading his book and watched this immediately after. Adam Kay is a deeply insightful person, and this interview shows that. Very thought provoking!
Love Adam Kay. Just started reading his book too. Great interview, and Kay represented his beliefs honestly, knowledgeably and with professionalism.
This book was a world wind of emotions. I had no idea OBGYNs let alone other doctors endured so much. The ending was a great reflection, so moving
A fab interview. 101%agree with all he said, I'm half way through the book and loving it, I've laughed and cried it's a must read esp for nhs staff.
I love this writer ❤️it so important to shed a light on the reality of being a Dr so general public can understand what Dr's really go through emotionally and physically. It's so comforting to the fellow Dr's as well to know that they r not alone in feeling overwhelmed and having difficulty coping
His book is totally relatable. Being a Ob-Gyn is the most underrated and the most nerve-racking profession of all. No one other a surgeon or a Ob-gyn can understand the stress that we go through. And that's precisely the reason I married an eye surgeon. He knows all the complications of Ob-Gynae surgeries as do I know of ophthalmology surgeries. And We act as buffers for each other. Since discussing your mental stress ,mistakes, burnout is considered a sign of weakness at the workplace , only a partner at home would understand.
We are so grateful that Adam is one of our patrons in the fight for assisted dying in the UK.
Great interview. Dr. Kay, you have to use your amazing talent to speak and guide politicians to make better our NHS. Love your book.
I suppose it may sound very odd, but my brother recommended the book when someone close to me was in hospital with his life hanging by a thread. Laughing like mad at home helped me get through it. He got through it too.
Wow, just watched the BBC series and it has cut so close to the bone. Harrowing, but I now feel like I can explain to friends who aren't medical what life is like in the hospital, and to past relationships why I was always revising or staying late at work. Well done for leaving Adam, I might be following. But what is so desperately needed is reform within the system, support that though has improved is still so desperately lacking, and toxic culture that shames people, rarely delivers any positive feedback, only negative, and doesn't allow us to talk openly about our struggles and where everyone is just as stretched as the next person holding their lives together and just doesn't have enough left to hear out the horrors of a colleagues bad day. We can and must do better.
I work at moorfields as a technician/HCA we are stretched and pushed to perform 2/3 people’s task regularly. The stress in enormous. They want more for less from less. Training HCA to perform nursing tasks and then overwhelming the HCAs with workload that the nurses do not perform is NOT the way forward.
Absolutely amazing book, what saddens me however is that a system broke his spirit.
He was clearly a very good doctor.
A fantastic heartfelt interview with a beautiful and amazing man. Thanks for this C4 you are leading the flagship as always
iMAGINE HAVING SUCH A LOVELY DOCTOR!
Comedy can save a life- I was so down and anxious yesterday, but comedians on TH-cam saved me
This man is REAL! Thank you Adam.
I can't help but think Krishnan felt somewhat uncomfortable hearing how little support and how many hours they work ...when he asked him "why couldn't he access the normal support that most members of the public do ..?" wow,I thought does this guy know anything about mental health access or lack of access in this country to anything resembling quality mental healthcare
I read this book while I was recovering from apendicitis, I thought that I was going to herneate because of how much I was laughing!
What a lovely and honest account / interview. Thank you.
So glad I found this!!
Great interview and I agree with Adam 100% on everything he said.
Guys!!!! This legend was the guy who created Amateur Transplant! Adam if you see this can I say thank you for Going Underground...still sing it like 10 years + after I first heard it. Had it as the ringtone on my Nokia brick. Introduced me to the Jam as well :)
.....and this is just before covid struck so I dread to imagine what those staff have been through now...they must be on their knees in some places.Invest in our NHS,train and fill those 100.000 vacancies across all the areas.Stop underfunding our NHS and all the other public services we all rely on ...enough is enough !!!
Thank you!
My dad is a Dr and everything he said about Drs is %100 accurate.
I love how he speaks 🎶
love the book!
You can privatise the NHS without selling hospitals, you contract out services, so far catering and cleaning have been privatised, the next stage is medical services, pharmacy has gone in many hospitals. GP practices are ripe for privatisation as they are generally not owned by the NHS, the GP partners are subcontractors to the NHS, American HMO health care companies have their sights on U.K. GP surgeries.
The interviewer said so what if we’ve lost Drs and Nurses from Europe we’ll get them from India or Africa, this is completely immoral, third world countries in desperate need of medical professionals and the U.K. hoovers them up with the offer of large salaries, offer nothing to the country where the Drs/Nurses were trained, the current cost of training a Dr is £300-400K. If the Drs are from France, Germany, Spain or Scandinavia those economies can afford the loss of some medical professionals but not the likes of Burkina Faso? Why am I giving charitable donations for health care in India for eye surgery when their Drs are migrating to the west? This is morally wrong, we have plenty of people in the U.K. capable of training to be Drs but the government chooses not to provide sufficient medical training places to meet demand, to steal Trained Drs on the cheap from the third world leaving patients without any hope of care is despicable.
the lack of support he describes is the same with nursing...heartless
Honestly, basically the same with every care-oriented profession under the NHS.
Loved it
If it was bad when he left it must be horrendous now. They can't run it down much more.
You did do a good job. You did much more than you were ever paid to do very often. Hopefully you know this. Zero risk does not exist. You would be a wonderful GP :-) Thanks for writing your book.
In which platform the series can be seen? Thank you. (I live in Europe, not in the UK).
I always treat my doctor as a human, it's how she deserves to be treated.
I loved the book
I was friends with medicine and nursing students when at university and what stood out to me was that from the off, the nurses are in placements regularly from their first term, but the medics had none of this. Instead, they spend five years solely in an academic environment, learning about a job they may find they are not suited to or may even hate.
precisely, every doc should ideally work with nurses right from the start, perhaps even be a nurse for a time initially, in germany they had this system until about 10 years or so I think, its now definitely worse as it has become more academic as well...
I think it depends on the Medical School to be fair. I believe at Glasgow halfway through 3rd year until the end of 5th year you are pretty much 50/50 when it comes to academics and placements
No medical student spends 5 years solely in an academic environment. You made that bit up.
Hate to point this out but no medical school does that. Everyone spends a minimum of three years in the clinical environment even at the most academically oriented institutions
No med student spends their time exclusively in an academic environment lol
Great book great series👍👍
Can’t wait to see you live big guy! Shame it got cancelled first time round cos of the beer virus, see you soon
Time 44:15 - 44:30 about politicians the video was edited lol watch and listen carefully
Yeah that jumpcut lol. Politburo didn’t like a part there😁
This guy is so right. I’m starting to think this way about nursing as well they’ve made it too academic and like her said the people who look good on paper may not necessarily be a good nurse.
Adam you are right, no need to be apologetic!
This is absolutely amazing, Adam is great he should enter politics
congrats, Adam, you have two kids in 2023❤❤
why would you get the most serious man on earth to interview a COMEDIC WRITER??? Their energies are so different it's very jarring, just because the interviewer almost went to med school does not mean he's automatically the best person to interview...
that suicide statistic is really shocking..awful..awful..how does this compare with other European countries I wonder?
Sounds like will Mckenzie from the inbetweeners
I knew he reminded me of someone! 😅
I can’t un-hear it now!
Not quite as high pitched and annoying though
💯
Good for him for being so honest about the gross underfunding of the NHS Plenty money for wars but not for the health of the nation.
He's quit smug
He’s a leftie with no idea what adequately funding the NHS would require.
Should the kinder egg woman not be considered a massive waste of money (tax payers).
the title of the video and the actual content is mismatched...
Adam Kay's assessment of the screening process used for medical school is applicable to every test used to screen out candidates for degrees etc ... Study psychometrics and you'll find that the criteria used has nothing to do with success ... or being good at ones career... Everyone whose studied psychometrics does or should know this. (unless they didn't pay any attention to what they were studying) everyone whose familiar with tests knows this. What determines success? Motivation.
Suppose that's true in a sense that trait conscientiousness and IQ are the greatest predictors of success about 0.3 of total effect
The books does what it says.
Adam Kay you really should be the next Prime Minister... I would vote for you! Yes, Brexit has made a massive impact, however it has been swept under the carpet as a great success... really? Tbh I have not read your book, however my daughter and I have seen you on your last 3 tours in Nottingham and Leicester and we are really looking forward to seeing you at the Curve in Leicester next month... so no pressure.. :) I agree about the lack of funding/support... however I would be hitting my head against the stupid tory wall.... See you in Leicester, can't wait!! Good work, btw.. :) Oh and yes, the Tories do want to abolish the NHS!! Just saying...
Christ he's the spit of his namesake Peter
🤔.... oh hey it’s that one reporter who pissed of Robert Downey Jr. lol. I’ll never forget that. I’m pretty sure he would love to.
ok
I think the interviewer does not understand what working in a broken health system is (even though he was a medical student, which he cannot compare at all with being a Doctor), Cause most of his questions are irrelevant, like trying to make Adam’s saying things.
Adam is such a gentleman and professional to manage this stupid interview. If I was him, I could just leave and tell the interviewer to be more prepared before calling me for an interview. Not because Adam is funny, nice and quitted medicine..means that he does not know what he is talking about.
This interviewer reminds me people coming to the ER on a busy night shift on the weekend asking for stupid thing’s and make me waste my time trying to explain irrelevant things.
Wonder if this guy went to Charing Cross?
Kevin Gregory-Evans he went to Imperial yes
@@blobbins17 thought so - to say that they were unprepared for clinical life is not unusual for Imperial med students.
Kevin Gregory-Evans I don’t believe that would be something unique to
Imperial graduates
@@blobbins17 not unique perhaps but it is pretty telling that I guessed right from just listening to his problems with his training.
Kevin Gregory-Evans and why did you ‘guess’ that? What do you know of Imperial training?
A
Can’t exactly pin down if the host is trying to play the devil’s advocate or an actual tory.
What a load of awfully meaningless questions: ‘why so cynical about the politicians?’ ???
I thought KGM was very sympathetic here.... he's drawing questions out of his interviewee (with which he seems v.sympathetic). The book is excellent by the way.
ই
Wonder what's behind his "good at hockey".
Extracurricular achievements, particularly those that are popular at private schools such as rugby/hockey etc, are one of the things that medical applications value - for some nonsensical reason.
@@conorhardacre The sentiment is that they look for people who are "well-rounded" and have interests outside of just getting high grades
@@fizzybizzy3790 I understand that, but I disagree with the idea people are either a good choice as a future doctor or not good choice based on how sporty or musical or whatever they are aged 18.
Sorry, the statistic on medical bankruptcy is way off. That consists of a statistical "stretch" including people who went bankrupt for other reasons who also happened to have medical expenses. The reality is 12-17% of bankruptcies in the U.S. have medical expenses as their main cause.
Still very high for a developed nation, likely the highest
Should be 0%
WHS.
Didn't hear either mention the increased population which is a major factor causing the problems -
Paying too many people at the top!
what his show on the bbc proved is that there is not enough empathy amongst his own colleagues. adam seems to focus on external support but his own colleagues lack of support and understanding made a huge difference to how distressingly sad he was made to feel by his own colleagues when he simply needed support and understanding from the very people that he worked with. he needs to focus on changing attitudes of his own colleagues and not blame external factors on his so called failure to remain in medicine.
I can’t believe someone has listened to this interview and watched the TV show and came away with this perspective. Yes, Adam has been very honest that part of the problem is internal attitudes but I think the TV show also made it very clear how these attitudes are affected by these external factors.
The show very clearly shows that one of the reasons that this ‘stiff upper lip’ culture remains is because of the lack of emotional bandwidth that staff have. If you’re in the 12th hour of your shift, desperately trying to stay afloat with too much work and not enough co-workers to help, how much do you have left in you to support others emotionally? The overwork, caused by the poor funding, is what can lead to this.
On top of this, a lot of the ‘external measures’ he suggests, properly informing doctors of the emotional costs and differences between specialities, placing less focus on top grades at medical school, delaying the age at which students make the choice to become doctors, are measures that are part and parcel of a cultural shift. A NHS that encourages listening and supporting colleagues would have to extend that support to students and prospective doctors, as well.
Of course, you also can’t rely on the entire attitude of a majority of medical staff to change overnight, but there are certainly external measures that can provide help that may relieve enough pressure to allow for an internal reassessment of attitude and culture.
@@CooksBooks i see you agree it is an internal issue and not exactly external as adam wants us to believe.
@@Paradox370 No, I don’t agree and I don’t think there’s any meaningful difference between the two.
@@CooksBooks there are meaningful differences between the two as one you can control through further targetted and structured training (internal) and the other external, which is a lot more difficult to control. we see our colleagues more than we see our families and so, if our own colleagues are being unsupportive and inconsiderate, this has a huge impact on ones mental health. Adams former colleagues need to change their attitudes towards those they work with that are struggling, not everybody is as strong as the next person.
@@Paradox370 As I made clear, that of course those internal things should change, but colleagues don’t need to be told to look out for each other, they know they should, they just don’t. As Adam points out, the system disincentives colleagues from helping each other and you can’t make any meaningful internal change until you start fixing the external problems that causes this. That’s why I say there’s no meaningful difference, you can’t fix the problems by focusing only on internal or external measures as the problem is not caused by either of them alone and therefore stating that it’s an internal or an external issue would be incorrect. There are many different reasons for the problem and they all need to be solved, but at the root of it all, is the dog eat dog atmosphere within hospitals which is caused by underfunding and overwork. The external affects the internal, so to try and split the two is ultimately not going to solve the problem.
Some of the solutions Adam suggested are of course, both external and internal simultaneously. They require both an internal rethinking of how the NHS should perceive the work of doctors and medicine as well as policy changes that match this rethinking. You cannot meaningfully split the two up.
Funny crippling somebody with learning difficulties?
problem for doc suicide is they get paid way too much n they cant cant resist ot.. tgey sign up at a COST - my wife is gp
How do you understand parents and children, when you have not got one yourself? With crystal ball or third eye?
What?
@@warbler1984 Yea
BTW the research says shorter hours have not improved patient outcomes or safety concerns have not borne out also multiple hand offs are potential safety risk points. I think ur premise is correct we need to change world over health industry but I don't think thats the whole story. When ppl in a system don't have shared mental model there is no favorable outcome. We need to talk but your is one view. Hope you work with others to change the health industry. Please collaborate. Dnt fall into confirmation bias. I think ur msg is great but that's not all the reality there is to talk about. Build on this please. As a healthcare worker in the health system longer than you that would be my wish for you. All he best. Also I disagree there can be no lateral movement. You just need to think laterality. I know many who have done it.
I would like to say that just because the research shows shorter hours don’t improve patients outcomes doesnt mean that is actually the case as the research can only be done using a sample, not the whole population. And I think his main argument for shorter hours is to improve the mental health of the doctors and other workers, so they feel better and are less likely to commit suicide
I feel the interviewer is somewhat naive. But Adam - nobody's listening.
the interviewer is so frustrating! hes not on trial!
Lame
You need to get down to A&E mate and have it looked at.
good to know your self aware
Emotionally immature!
He's like a fatter, gayer James Corden
and with a better personality than corden