This Is Going to Hurt is the Realistic Medical Drama Exposing Junior Doctor Life and NHS Pressures
- 7 days ago
- 6 min read
For decades, the medical procedural genre on television has often prioritized high-octane drama, personal relationships, and glossy cinematography, from ER and Grey’s Anatomy to more recent offerings. However, the BBC and AMC co-production, This Is Going to Hurt, based on Adam Kay’s reflective portfolio memoirs, forcefully strips away this glamour to deliver perhaps the most realistic and painful portrayal of a broken medical system currently airing. The seven-episode series, set in 2006, centers on Adam (played by Ben Whishaw), an Acting Obstetric and Gynae Registrar attempting to navigate an utterly dysfunctional NHS hospital while struggling to keep his personal life afloat. The show reveals dark and uncomfortable access to the inner thoughts of a beleaguered junior doctor, making the viewing experience simultaneously compelling and painful. It is a dose of truthful and realistic medicine for audiences, one that does not distract from the inherent pain of the subject matter.
The Paradoxical Reality of the NHS System
This Is Going to Hurt plunges viewers directly into the chaos of the National Health Service (NHS), showcasing the immense and often contradictory pressures faced by medical staff. The hospital setting is disturbingly familiar yet utterly dysfunctional, revealing a system that was already crumbling and under-funded years before the strain of a global pandemic stretched healthcare centers further.
The Vice of Vocation and Exhaustion
The series expertly weaves together the many paradoxes of NHS work: the glory alongside the chaos, the elation mixed with visceral pain, and the variety of patients contrasting with the grimness of the hospital setting. Adam, who is under 30 but acting as the senior practitioner on a highly-frequented ward, finds himself working without proper resources and must contend with supervisors focused on public relations instead of practical support. The series exposes the exhausting reality of the job, illustrating the impossibility of maintaining a personal life and the "slow-motion car crash" that ensues as exhaustion wraps its tentacles around those involved.
A central theme is the "vice" that signing up for a vocational job holds, making it nearly impossible for staff to walk away despite the immense strain. For doctors like Adam, the pressure necessitates juggling many plates in the air just to keep going. The show highlights the grim reality of finishing night shifts with a crushing sense of utter aloneness, often with no one even noticing the effort expended. Even small moments underscore this isolation: in one scene, Adam tries to share the powerful feeling of "actually saving someone’s life," only to be cut off mid-sentence by his partner organizing a night out.
The Anatomy of a Beleaguered Junior Doctor
The protagonist, Adam, is not merely a collection of horrifying and hilarious memories from a memoir, but a complex, nuanced character wrestling with trauma and the impossible expectations of his role. Adam is characterized as a whip-smart problem solver with a borderline genius ability to discern a diagnosis, but his intense pressure and resultant bouts of rage have made him unpopular among nurses and junior doctors.
Adam embodies the struggles of a doctor forced into the role of a perpetual scapegoat. Patients unhappy with their services often direct complaints toward him, rather than the higher-ranked decision makers or the nurses. To cope with the constant stress and the difficulty of explaining sensitive medical specifics to the public, the series employs a clever device: Adam breaks the fourth wall to explain his personal frustrations directly to the audience. This use of dark humor and direct address is shown to reinforce Adam’s need for compartmentalization as a traumatized doctor proving his worth under impossible strain. The rare instances where Adam’s professional guise breaks down—such as his small act of rebellion in choosing a Black nurse to assist with a racist, pregnant patient—reveal his underlying personal ethics.
The Cost of Professionalism: Trauma and Mental Health
The series provides a stark examination of the inherent trauma of medical work and the devastating effect of the culture of machismo in Western medicine. After Adam makes a critical mistake early in the series, he is constantly haunted, yet he has "no outlet, no one he can turn to". The medical bubble normalizes deep anxiety and fear, leading to a culture that demands doctors "suck it up". This process hardens medical professionals, causing them to lose their capacity to be vulnerable to others—a cycle grimly summarized by the educational mantra: "See one, teach one, do one".
Shruti’s Breaking Point
The narrative explores this crisis not only through Adam but crucially through Shruti Acharya, a student doctor working under him. Ambika Mod's breakout performance captures the reality of a wide-eyed and extremely vulnerable newbie who has no safe shelter. Shruti is frazzled and exhausted, buckling under the pressure of 90-hour work weeks and non-stop studying for qualifying exams. While plucky interns in other dramas might run hungrily toward surgery, Shruti is visibly at her breaking point barely after beginning her career. The cultural pressure is palpable; she faces familial expectations alongside professional demands. Tragically, the dynamic between Adam and Shruti suffers when she appears to become a "consummate professional," blinding Adam to the reality that she is experiencing depression and anxiety.
The show makes it clear that the mental health crisis among medical professionals was not a recent occurrence triggered by COVID-19. The final episode culminates with a stellar monologue delivered by Whishaw, delivering the show’s clear message: the rising suicide rates of doctors should be "a national fucking headline every time it happens and instead it's just brushed under the carpet". This potent cry-for-help feels like an honest, necessary admission by a well-developed character, cementing the series' role as a piece of powerful social commentary.
A New Standard for Medical Drama
This Is Going to Hurt succeeds because it is an unglamorous addition to the medical canon that focuses on peeling back new layers of realistic portrayal. The strength of the show lies in its commitment to realistic depictions: baby deliveries are gruesome, nurses are shown to keep the hospitals running, and the doctors are too busy running from crisis to crisis to exchange more than a few words with patients. Unlike some ensemble medical shows set to run for many years, this adaptation is a tight, finite series centered on a single protagonist struggling with profound loneliness, emphasizing how strong interpersonal relationships are difficult to maintain amidst high staff turnover.
For medical professionals, watching the series is an intense, difficult experience that “will hurt”. For the non-medical public, it serves as an immersive experience, offering a uniquely empathetic understanding of the vocational sacrifice required in medicine. The series forces the audience to confront the difficult realities of the NHS, making it a powerful and unique intervention into the landscape of prestige television.
🔖 Key Takeaways
🗝️ This Is Going to Hurt is an adaptation of Adam Kay’s memoirs that provides a realistic and unglamorous depiction of Junior Doctor Life in the NHS.
🗝️ The series is a compelling yet painful realistic medical drama that showcases the paradoxes of NHS work: chaos, glory, pain, and the professional vice that makes leaving impossible.
🗝️ The system depicted is under-funded and dysfunctional, forcing junior doctors, like Adam, to become isolated scapegoats who rely on dark humor and compartmentalization to cope with trauma.
🗝️ The series powerfully highlights the pre-existing mental health crisis among medical professionals, illustrated by the crushing exhaustion and anxiety experienced by student doctor Shruti Acharya.
🗝️ The show rejects the machismo culture of medicine and culminates in a clear message regarding the unacceptable silence surrounding rising suicide rates among doctors.
🗝️ By using devices like the fourth wall break, the series immerses the audience in the pressures of the job, offering great empathy for medical professionals running on fumes.
🌐 External sources
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This Is Going to Hurt
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