IT’S not often a TV series can make you laugh and wince all at the same time. The BBC One series This Is Going To Hurt follows Ben Whishaw as Adam Kay while he struggles with patients, hospital politics and having a social life. The show – based on doctor-turned-writer Adam’s bestselling book – pairs […]
IT’S not often a TV series can make you laugh and wince all at the same time.
The BBC One series This Is Going To Hurt follows Ben Whishaw as Adam Kay while he struggles with patients, hospital politics and having a social life.
The show – based on doctor-turned-writer Adam’s bestselling book – pairs black humour and moments of extreme stress.
For those in the medical profession, the storylines are all too familiar.
Here, we reveal their real-life horror stories, from X-rated X-rays to one very messy birth.
Anaesthetist Dr Ed Patrick, from Oxfordshire, says he’s had his fair share of embarrassing moments.
When he was working in A&E as a junior doctor he saw an elderly man who was hard of hearing and had taken a fall.
Ed said: “I had to shout everything. And, you know, in A&E you’ve just got these curtains separating. It’s not private at the best of times.
“I said a standard greeting like ‘My name is Patrick’.
“And he said, ‘I don’t need a taxi’. So I was quite sure that he wasn’t understanding what I was saying.”
He found the medicine Sildenafil on the patient’s notes and asked what it was – rather than looking it up.
Dr Ed said: “He just replied, ‘It’s for the old soldier’.
The junior doctor repeated the question, but the old man kept saying the same response.
Eventually the pensioner shouted: “IT’S TO GET ME C**K HARD, DOC.”
Dr Ed said: “Sildenafil was viagra and I had no idea.
“So I leave this consultation absolutely sheepish and just find everyone outside – staff and patients – laughing.”
Dr Ed wrote his book Catch My Breath as he worked brutal hours in ICU during the pandemic.
He says laughter is the best medicine: “It’s a release mechanism in order to help you cope.”
Former agency and private midwife Piroska Cavell, 55, from Whitstable says you need a sense of humour to deliver babies.
As a midwife, she says more often than not you are exposed to all kinds of bodily fluids.
She said: “Waters go and you’re covered in it from head to foot.
“I mean, I’ve literally stood there with it running down my face, and still had to deliver the baby.
“I’ve had to be trying to wash myself in a sink with paper towels because the shower’s not working or there isn’t one.
“And it’s in your shoes, that’s the other thing.
“It’s all in your shoes and you’re literally squelching – that could be waters, that could be blood, all sorts.”
She added: “I’ve been on a 12-hour shift before and not had time to have a drink. And then literally in the last hour, I’ve had the manager’s cold cup of coffee given to me.
“Which I’ve been absolutely grateful for because I don’t care.
“I put it on the table in the delivery room and as I did that, the woman’s waters went straight in the coffee.
“Inside, I was dying. But on the outside I was like, ‘Okay, fine. That’s fine’.”
While most are under no illusion that medicine is a glamorous career, some of the day-to-day tasks can make you wince.
One scene in the programme shows Adam removing a Kinder Egg from a woman’s vagina – put there to surprise her boyfriend.
Dr Noreen Nguru, 32, from East Sussex, told of a similar experience as a junior doctor when a patient came into A&E with stomach pains.
She left the NHS in 2020 to start a travel consultancy What The Doctor Recommends.
She sent for an X-ray and a more senior doctor told her the results were “acan”.
She said: “I said I had not heard of acan syndrome before.
“The senior doctor replied ‘No, I mean an actual drink can’.
“We went back to our patient who was still writhing in pain and specifically asked about the possibility there might be a can inserted in his back passage.
“He confirmed there was – we called the surgical team.”
But among the laughter there is real heartache – both on-screen and in real life.
Scenes show burnt out student doctor Shruti bluntly tell a couple their unborn baby had no heartbeat.
When the couple broke down, she calls in her consultant who saves the day.
One nurse Lauren Whittaker*, 57, told how working in emergency can present some heart breaking moments.
With a 20-year career in ICU and A&E, she says she is hardened but there have been moments which brought her to tears.
One patient was brought in by ambulance with her husband after momentarily going semi-comatose in their garden.
Lauren suggested a brain scan to find out what was going on.
She said “They looked at each other and she said ‘I think I’m pregnant at last’.
To be safe before scanning the patient Lauren made the patient take a test – which came back positive.
She said: “They were absolutely thrilled that she was pregnant.
“And then they had the decision as to what investigations she should and shouldn’t have done.
“So they did a CT scan of her head. She had a brain tumour.
“I can still to this day see her and her husband’s faces.
“The decision had to be do they treat her and that she would have to have an abortion done?
“Because obviously the drugs that she would need wouldn’t wouldn’t be safe for the baby. Or do they risk having the baby and her not surviving long enough? Or the tumour becoming inoperable after having had the baby. And that was the option they took.
“I never found out what happened.”
“We were all just in tears. You know, we might come across as being hard sometimes. But some things just hit you.”
But she says at times there can also be a bit of partner management.
She told how one man came in with his boyfriend with a sex toy stuck up his bum.
When the boyfriend suddenly disappeared, Lauren asked if there was anyone else the patient could call.
The patient said: “I think someone’s gonna have to find my wife – this is not going to be easy.”
Lauren said: “You’ve then got to support the wife who’s just worried sick about her poor husband, who is now in A&E plus the revelation that’s just come out.
“It’s the most awkward conversation you can have with somebody.”
*Names have been changed
