On Valentine’s Day, I went with my Valentine, to see Adam Kay:Undoctored at Newbury’s Corn Exchange.
I have a soft spot for Dr Adam.
His book “This is going to hurt” was a great read – hilarious but in a dark way, and in a way that made a very strong point about the NHS.
As far as experiencing the NHS at the pointy end, Dr Adam Kay has been there and got the T-shirt logo engraved on his chest. He trained as a doctor for seven years and practised as one in the NHS for a further six years. Those six years were gruelling – as witnessed by the “This is going to hurt” TV series with Adam Kay played by Ben Wishaw. A particularly traumatic incident led to Dr Kay leaving the NHS and taking up a career in writing – but only after he tried in vain to repair his mental health inside the NHS.
Through his hilarious readings, Adam Kay paints a disturbing picture of the almost complete absence of mental health care for doctors and nurses in the NHS.
The statistics are disturbing. The BMA reckons that “suicide rates among healthcare workers have been 24% higher than the national average, with female doctors being one of the groups at increased risk. Data further indicates that, tragically, one doctor dies by suicide approximately every three weeks.”
Dr Kay strongly pushed to make sure that the TV adaptation of his first book reflected the problem. The character Shruti struggles with her mental health, eventually taking her own life. Dr Kay believes that the first step to addressing the problem is to acknowledge and commemorate those who are lost to mental health issues in the NHS. There is now Shruti’s Tree at Ealing hospital (in the same place that a tree was planted as part of the TV drama), dedicated to all those in the NHS who have lost their lives due to mental ill-health.
There is now an increasing series of memorial trees popping up across the country thanks to charity Doctors In Distress.
Dr Kay is particularly critical of the culture amongst doctors and their bosses – you are discouraged to address your boss (normally a consultant) by their first name. There is a “tough it out and wait to become a consultant and get the Aston Martin/Big boys don’t cry” culture.
Adam Kay is doing the NHS and us a great service by speaking up in the most witty and graphic way about the huge problem of mental ill-health in the our national health service.
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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One Comment
I couldn’t agree more. High suicide rates are common in many parts of the NHS, including the ambulance services and students. This article https://www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2020/01/crumbling-britain-bullying-stress-and-death-ambulance-services is from 2020 but provides a good summary. For example, one student took their own life every year from the London Ambulance Service’s Paramedic Academy, until 2021, when Covid hit and stress got worse and I stopped counting. I personally campaigned for ambulance workers’ mental health in the print and broadcast media and there were some improvements, for example the London Ambulance Service creating a new wellbeing team for their staff and, more generally, by raising the issue of stress, PTSD and bullying in the public eye. But there is still a way to go; it’s not just the sometimes terrible things that they see, but the relentless stress of being non-stop, all the time, with no space to decompress between patients.