Były lekarz opowiada najmocniejsze historie ze szpitala. Adam Kay [Napisy PL]

Były lekarz opowiada najmocniejsze historie ze szpitala. Adam Kay [Napisy PL]

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um foreign I think we should start uh because I know that your books are pretty popular in Poland although probably some people don't know you don't know your work if you could just say a couple of uh words about your your origin story how you get here uh my villain origin story yeah you're another villain but you but you you have some blood on your hands like literally literally yes so um so I worked as a doctor in the in the UK and all the time that I was working as a doctor I kept Diaries and I don't quite know why I thought I was keeping the Diaries at the time but in retrospect it was probably my therapy and um five six years ago I published uh my Diaries uh in this in this book This is Gonna Hurt and then um and life got very busy from there so I'd um I'd left medicine after a traumatic uh incident which I which which I've I've written about and then I I moved from that into I wrote spits and pieces television and I performed a bit on stage but uh I was you know not hugely successful but you know it's a job but I was grateful for the work but then the book sort of changed changed everything for me and since then I've been quite busy writing other books but you come back to the uh the restore to to your period of time uh in which you're working you've been working as a doctor as a junior doctor and the uh second book is not second your second but the second main book I think yeah undoctored is uh more about yourself it's less about the patience and more about yourself I think it is I think in some way it's two books it's a prequel so this is going to hurt and a sequel okay so it rewinds the tape to being at medical school which I think is a I've always thought as a fascinating place and I thought other people might sort of enjoy you know what it's like throwing teenagers into the situation of you know cutting up dead bodies and learning how to break bad news and and not necessarily taught the best way and I think which can leave you with some it's you know leave you slightly damaged potentially I think lots of doctors are slightly beaten up from their from their training and their work and then the other half of the book is about after I pressed the button and blew up my life which I suspect is something that particularly in the last few years lots of people have considered doing what does you know is this the moment to make a make a big change and um after I left medicine I've also been a patient quite a bit and so I talk about talk about that I think doctors make uh lousy patients but in in in general uh yeah it's not a it's not about me working on the woods I think I you know I needed to move on in some way and I I guess I had anecdotes there was more stuff I could say about working on the woods but I don't know what the point of that book would have been I um there was I like there to be a point to a book rather than just the sort of I know it's just just not just frivolous not just stories because like um the the first book you know is you know seems to be a just stories but that's a bit of a confidence trick and hopefully it's got something a bit uh bigger to say and uh and likewise with uh with with with the new book hopefully when they leave you know if they get to the end of it by the end of their thinking oh absolutely I think talking about first book this is going to hurt I don't think that there are just stories although it is hilarious it's like most of the time it is it's absolutely funny it's um you know just it's it's just like schadenfreude because you're looking at other people's pain and you wonder how could that even even happen right most of the time um and it is funny and I hope that uh I haven't seen the show the the TV show but TV series but I think it's also the mix of how life can be funny when you when you have something to deal with with the doctors and your yourself and also at the end but not only at the end it is really really sad so the mix of happy and sad is is very important here because that's one of the things that I wanted to say about both of the books it's not comedy oh it's not it's not like because sometimes when when people talk about you when when you when they know a couple of words about you that you do stand-up comedy and stuff they think that this is pure fun it is not you laugh and you cry in the in the span of like 30 seconds which I'm I'm I'm I'm glad you you think that because a true reflection of what life is like working in a hospital wherever that is in the world is a mixture of the two like if a TV show about a hospital was a pure drama or a pure sitcom neither of those would be an honest reflection of it because there are these gear shifts yeah so like you know I'd be in a I'd be sitting in a in an antenatal clinic and I'd be you know seeing a patient and something would happen I would think I'm going to write this down when I get to my diary tonight because I'm gonna or I'm going to be telling people about this in the pub for months and then the next patient you see you're you know you can't find baby's heartbeat and that's the lowest point in that family's life and it's and that's just the nature of the the job these huge gear shifts and um yeah I know it does move between the between the two a lot although I've seen uh all of the episodes of my and it is my favorite TV show of all time House MD that's wonderful I I love this show uh I have to say that um I'm not an expert with the medical terminology and uh yeah reading this in English would be probably pretty hard for me but uh can you share some of the stories because I think that's this is your hook for most of the time when you tell one of you one of two of the cases you stoned upon during your work and then you will get what you had to deal with back in the day yeah so um I mean how disgusting do you want should we talk about Digraph you can you can go deep okay literally so this was this was so I'm uh back back home in the UK I'm on a new tour at the moment where um I'm I'm doing some stuff from my from my new book but I but I said I do some like greatest hits from from some little stories from my first book and then people are in touch on the on the internet suggesting what they like I was a musician or something you know which songs I should I should play from the old album and um the uh one of the most requested stories was if this uh horrific uh incidents and it's a so this involves some terminology so I'm going to teach you some medicine this is the word is de-gloving and so D gloving is where yeah you remember that bit I know this one it hurts every time so the uh d-gloving is is when the the skin and blood vessels get torn from the structures under underneath and so typically like if a motorcyclist were to fly off their bike hands draggle on the ground the gloving you see how they're starting to sweat yeah and yeah and this is a story about an 18 year old guy who I I met in the accident emergency department he'd been out celebrating his exam results and he was dancing and on the roof of a bus shelter decided to to get down uh by sliding down a Lamppost which is there this was his mistake and he'd misjudged the texture of the Lamppost and so he came to her and he sort of grazed his hands a bit and he had a complete degloving of his penis and uh uh there wasn't a lot left of the of the of the penises the worst penis I've ever seen and I've I've seen I've seen a lot of penises and this is yeah this is number number one it was like a couple of inches of urethra coated with a thin layer of bloody pulp um like a bit of spaghetti and a smear of tomato sauce and um understandably uh he was upset uh uh and uh he asked you know my boss if the penis could be re-gloved and my boss explained that the glove was you know spread quite evenly up eight foot of Lamppost in West London so uh so I mean that is that's a traumatic story yeah I don't I don't know if anyone's still watching by now I think most people would switch off halfway through that story and just but there are some who just turned the volume up a bit and you know and they I mean it seems that there was a for whatever reason there was a there was an interest or a market in these sort of disgusting stories from the from the the wards but what I was hiding in there hopefully was the impact that doing that job has on you as a human being so what you know what it means if you work 97 hour weeks what that does to you know Turtle to friendships to relationships to family to to everything and so for example when you work as a doctor in the UK when you're a junior doctor and by the way Junior doctor basically means anyone apart from the specialist right at the top so you can be a junior doctor and you can be our age and um so they're actually often quite senior people you move Hospital once a year and you don't get to decide where you move so you know as a as a as an adult you know with a mortgage and you know often with with children or whatever you're just being taught oh you've got to move 40 miles away and things like that I wanted people to to to know about and I wanted them to think about the emotional toll that's the the job takes and really just to think of doctors as human beings people who make mistakes people who get sick people who get sad people who need a moment to themselves people who need some time out because we don't think of our doctors as human and I think that's really dangerous for everyone if you don't think of your doctor it's dangerous for the patients because the the old-fashioned model of medicine as I am the doctor I tell you what to do and that's always right I'm always right I have to be even in the day even if someone dies well I made the right decision it was you know that was your fault for dying that was the old version of medicine it doesn't it doesn't work because if I tell you you must take this medicine and have this Physiotherapy you're not actually going if you don't agree with it you're just going to stop going for your physiotherapy stop taking the medicine if it's as it should be and it's a discussion and I acknowledge that it's your body and I re if you're invested in it and you trust it and believe it and you've interrogated it then you're so much more likely to you know to go along with it and and and get better so that is that's why it's important that the doctor is not put up on a on a pedestal but it's also bad for the doctor themselves because if you believe the myth if you believe that you're you know unimpeachable and you the I know why I know why doctors end up thinking like this because you have to present you have to you want the patient to have confidence in you I understand that if I'm about to do an operation I you know I need to be millimeter accurate you want to trust I can do it but doctors are fallible and if you believe that you don't make mistakes then you believe that you don't get sick and you believe that you don't get sad and what that results in is not getting help and what that results in is burnouts and um and I think it's you know I've spoken um I've spoken to it it's now a number of of doctors during my my trip to opponent a lot I was I was performing last night and uh and lots of lots of doctors came up afterwards and just said that it's uh it's a universal problem and uh what I am so one of these times I'd moved I'd moved Hospital and uh uh because I've been told I had to and I and I had to register with the GP so I could get my you know inhaler um and so I went to the Jeep and I just come off a shift and I was exhausted and this was stressed and they said oh we just need to take your post and take your blood pressure my blood pressure was like 9 million over 2 million it was like I've just come off a ship now like no no we didn't we need to share everything's all right so I went to work and I was wearing this blood pressure cuff that you had to wear for 24 hours so I can measure it during the course of the day and that was all fine that a patient said to me in this Clinic it's funny Doctor you don't think of doctors as getting sick they don't don't think of that because you don't think of your doctor as being human that's the long-winded thing I was trying to say yeah and you write about it uh in the both books some sometimes directly sometimes between the lines of course and um the other great thing you do with your writing is a sort of had fake I would say that you uh you get your reader by funny stories funny quote unquote sometimes yeah penis story is like perfect one and then you say very serious uh topics you talk about serious topics uh I don't want to spoil the spoil up a lot from the from the books but people are actually dying and there are real people and uh really terrible things happen to you during stories you you tell in the both books and um um at which point because I I think it didn't happen when you wrote the This is Gonna Hurt but after some time you started to actually talk about mental problems among doctors yeah and this actually started to be your main thing even last night after the comedy part you were like let's get serious now and let's talk about Mental Health I'm it's such a it's such a privilege to you know have you know now millions of people have read these these books I've got a captive audience and they might have come for the funny and I and I do these tours you know mostly in the in the UK I do my shows and I've got a captive audience and uh at a TV show that's again more millions of people watching it again I can I can use my powers for goods rather than just um just presenting something flippant there's a version of those books where I just do the funny stories or the disgusting stories but I think the value of Arts if this doesn't sound too you know pretentious is that you you can make a difference not a difference like you do in a labor board but so here's the thing with mental health so in the UK which is you know not dissimilar size country to Poland a third bigger order every three weeks one doctor takes their life so there's suicides and a doctor every three weeks in the United Kingdom and it's never in the papers it's never in the news and I think it's a scandal and it should be a headline but this culture of not talking about this stuff is so endemic that suicide and Healthcare professionals has become such a Taboo it's never spoken about and they're there wasn't until recently until some work I was I was I was working with changed this there wasn't even a memorial to to all these thousands of you know brilliant people who've been broken by a system and you know and taken their taken their lives and and so I'm I'm on a bit of a bit of a mission recently to to to let people know about this because how can you possibly fix a problem unless you acknowledge that the problem exists and at the moment in the UK and it sounds very similar to Medics I've spoken to here in Poland at the moment it seems like everyone's pretending there's no problem and there is and there's something I said at the end of my show yesterday which is that everyone can can help here so everyone knows someone who works in in a Health Service it's too in any country it's too big an organization not to know a doctor Midwife paramedic nurse I mean you you'll know some whether it's friends neighbors family just occasionally check in on them and and they I bet you when you ask them how their day was they'll go yeah fine because you're trained to say the days are fine they're never really fine they can't be the nature of the job means they can't be but if you continue to check in and continue to ask them how their day was yeah fine then the net result of that will be that when they have a really bad day which you know thankfully don't happen all the time but sometimes they do happen and they happen to I had such a bad day I ended up leaving the the profession and I I had nowhere to turn I felt I couldn't speak to people in the hospital I'd been brought up not to talk about my problems to just keep going and that was so damaging for me and um lots of people quit their profession lots of people you know as I say do do far worse one one in three weeks and knowing that there's someone you can turn to knowing that you've got a shoulder to cry and you know can make all the difference and so that you know that's the that's the mission that I'm on at the at the moment because it feels like not enough is being done and I'm so lucky like I get invited to things like this I get invited all over the world and I can you know if it helps one person if one person watches this and thinks actually maybe I do need to you know take a take a bit of time off or maybe I do need to speak to someone about this stuff that's happening you know in my in my Hospital in my surgery in my clinic and then it's it was it was worth worth the air miles you're absolutely right and I hope that there are people who think this way also and I know that many of us know some some doctors who are working harder too hard maybe too many hours a week um did you do you uh miss it sometimes I do miss I miss it a lot I miss the reason that every doctor goes into the profession in the first place which is to help people yeah you know as as basic as it sounds that is the reason people do the job that's the reason not the money can't be the money because you you know you have to have a certain number of you know good exam results to get into medical school there's a more efficient way of turning those exam results Into Cash than via VIA medicine like even it's not the money it's not the Kudos it's not that anything ultimately you have to want to help people otherwise why would you work those 97 hour weeks why would you do that to yourself why would you give yourself the emotional trauma you know the you know the fact is that you know after a shift that went on three hours too long because they often did because there's an emergency and there's no there's no slack in the system there's no spare member of staff to help you after that shift and you're driving home and you're exhausted and you've round the window down just to stay awake and you're still covered in blood and the dinners in the cats you've still got a smile on your face because you know you did something yeah do you you know I I can't articulate whether it's in my book or you know or through speaking adequately the feeling of you know having like saved a mum or a baby's life on a labor is there's nothing can compares to it and that is what keeps you going that's why you you turn up the next day and you stay three hours late the next day because it's um and I and I miss that and I miss patience and I miss colleagues and um and I dare say at some point in the future I'll find myself going back not to labor Ward but in some capacity the draw is to it's too important and I you know every people lose interest in every author every writer I know that so it's not gonna it's not going to be like this for Reverend at some point um you know when it's you know when the graph is moving and in the other direction um I want to think about how I can how I can be useful how I can give something back again maybe it involves teaching medical students maybe it involves working in policy it certainly doesn't involve wearing scrubs and doing cesarean sections okay so not not going back there I don't think that's in no one's best interest it's not in my best interest it's not in the patient's best interest so someone could recognize you during the uh procedures that would be like dude yeah I mean that could that you know I'm I'm lucky because as an author yeah uh it's the the best version of of being in the public eye because generally people don't recognize you it's quite rare that I'm on camera you know you look at uh is there a picture of you probably no that was there's a picture of Ben Wisher I'd love to look like Ben Wisher that's what I like that's it that's meant it's yours of course and I think in that in the new book there's a there's a picture of me in the in the like just in the back cover inside of the back oh yeah that's my national rail photo card from when I was at University because a lot of the books based uh when I was at University oh it's a rail card I thought it's like a doctor ID it was even younger than that so that's right okay nice so if you're gonna if you recognize me from that you know that is that's extraordinary recognition that's a very nice young boy thank you very much with a bad haircut oh you look good okay I'll take it with all the faith in your eyes and you know changing the world oh yeah do I look a little more cynical now you look a little tired a bit more tan and I you know I said it's like I don't have the vocabulary you you look more grounded in the sense that you know that life is not like it you think be being 20 yeah right and then 1920 is a bad age to be so you know I went to medical school when I was 18 years old I was a teenager I think America does Healthcare almost completely wrong I think you know I think it's I mean the number of bankruptcies you're very rich or you don't have medical care oh there's nothing it's disgraceful yeah basically uh and there's a Gallup organization that the polling people do a poll of all of what's your biggest worry they ask every you know they do a poll of Americans every year their biggest worry is the availability and affordability of healthcare and how lucky we are to live in countries where hopefully no one watching is thinking that's my biggest concern in life how can I afford my insulin so anyway America I'm not saying America gets Healthcare right but one thing I think they do get right is medical school is postgraduate so it's a job you do you say it's a degree you when you've already done your first degree you're in your you know you're in your 20s you're no longer a teenager I mean you're still an idiot obviously we're all an idiot when we're yeah with with when we're you know in our early 20s apologies to people in their early 20s um but um your angle on the worlds are probably a bit wider you've probably left home you've probably probably had to earn some money you've maybe been in a relationship so you've probably got a bit more emotional maturity to ask yourself the question is medicine the right job for me I didn't ever ask myself that question no one ever asked me that question I talk in a book about are we recruiting the right people to be doctors and I think one of the biggest problems is it's idealistic people like me and that's in that photo there you know just left school that's not the right time to make such a big decision but also is there a better person to uh go through way many more hours during the week than someone who has their own ideas inside and keeps them oh it's it's important to be it's a to never lose you know your ideology and what you care about and what's in your heart but there's a cruelty in making an 18 year olds cut a dead body you know it doesn't make any sense and yeah in fact I don't think the purpose of uh you know putting cadaver's corpses in front of you know teenagers and making them Cutters is to learn the anatomy I think the purpose of it is truthfully to desensitize you to the concept of death and you know and everyone finds themselves making jokes around the body I talk about that in my book you know my first my first time with a with a with a dead body and and it starts off you know as I I try to do these things um sort of it is I think it probably is funny the stuff I talk about but then it is Buds and then sort of slightly deconstruct it and it's not appropriate but we're being basically taught to to make these jokes to um to use that to use humor as a coping mechanism and there are better coping mechanisms it's one I use a lot you know I learned humor which led to me writing my Diaries I you know I you know I drank wine when I got home those are my coping mechanisms they weren't good enough because a medical school they taught me how to break bad news and they they taught me how to deal with an aggressive patient but they never once taught me how to deal myself with Breaking Bad news or dealing with an aggressive patient because like they taught me in physics when I was at school and I'm sure you were too every action has an equal and opposite reaction Newton or one of that one of that some someone on there but um in medicine there's always it's never an equal reaction it can't be but there's always an opposite reaction that comes back to you as the as the the doctor and you need to acknowledge that and you need to acknowledge that from day one and I think people who go to medical school should read you know book like that so I'm sure there's there's loads of other books that sort of delve into the the topic because you need to you need to go into it with your eyes open you need to know you're getting yourself into there's because otherwise you end up like like me not knowing what the job actually is you know if you know if you have to have a procedure done whatever you will sign a consent form and they say here are the benefits and here are the risks and if you sign here you understand this right and that's called informed consents and that's the the basis of you know of medicine there has to be consent everywhere I don't think that as an 18 year old you can really have informed consent about going into the medical profession I'm pretty sure that I didn't yeah um when you started talking about consent it reminded me of a one story which is in the unducted nearby the end of the of the book which is like one of the one of the darkest I'm not we're not going to talk about it because I think it's a two big spoiler what do you think I mean I I can I don't find it the easiest thing in the world to talk about but I I was you know I was I was assaulted and I you know and I and I I write about it I was you know I was on a trip overseas and I was assaulted and um that chapter of the book came in and out of the book about 15 20 times it was it was I think it was still out of the book a week before it was published because I didn't know if I wanted it to be out there and I was scared about what the reaction might be but I'm glad I kept it in there because I thought if one person reads that and then decides to get help themselves then it was worth whatever discomfort awkwardness embarrassment shame that I felt in you know in putting it and putting it out there and you know and you know the book's just coming out here in Poland uh now but it's been out in the in the UK for a couple of months and I've had so many messages from from people saying that has helped and there's no you know doing frivolous jobs like we do there's no better feeling than someone saying that that actually help them and and also it's a book about it's a book about getting help a lot you know I do I talk about how being a doctor makes you a very bad patient you know like we're talking about you're trained to not not be sick as a child I think I maybe had like one hour off school my entire childhood because my father was a doctor everything you know got sorted out in-house at home like I've got you can probably see a scar on my forehead there that's from when he had a go at sewing up a head injury you know I'd sort of smashed my head I'm bleeding everywhere so I will sort that out yeah let's do it here we'll do it here and that's just the attitude it's it's embarrassing for a doctor to see another doctor it's like you failed it's I imagine it's like if a mechanic takes their car to a different mechanic why didn't you sort that out yourself and so I I didn't I talk in the book about not getting help for physical problems including like a spinal injury and a stone in my urinary tract like some you know some non-trivial medical problems if I'm the sort of person who doesn't get help for that how on Earth am I going to seek help for something that's in my in my head and and there were various things that were in my head and I thought I would be I'd be lying to my readers basically if I hid one of the biggest things that was in my head and as with everything I'm pleased that I wrote it down all of my fears about what are people going to share is say am I going to get hate for saying this and what's everything was totally unfounded that was just my brain tricking me trying to stop me getting it out there but every single time I have opened up about stuff and the first the first instance of This was um the way the the book ends and this is going to hurt about this terrible shift at work that saw me leaving the profession and it left me with some kind of PTSD I was having you know regular nightmares about it I couldn't forget it it was it was waking me up and haunting me that's only resolved when I started talking about it and I'm not saying I'm any kind of poster boy for getting help I'm not I'm still I'm still rubbish I've still got more to learn but now I do and whether it's professional help or whether it's talking to my partner or whether it's talking to to my friends it works it really does and a lot of people are scared of the idea that um and I think men are often particularly bad at you know at getting that kind of help and saying I'm struggling I think doctors that's disgust a bad um my family wasn't great at it so I was this perfect storm of a a male doctor with the surname k um and then but now I'm getting better that's that's very good to hear um and also you said that your uh that you had your own fears to write everything you had on your on your mind it's really inspiring to to know that um because for me as a reader that's the most important part that you sound honest yeah that there is fun there are real stories and also there is honesty and this this honesty part is really big and uh I think that uh this actually um is the is the most important part of the book to know that there's there's like real person on the other side um writing this and that went through all that so um that's that's really important for me um talking about these two books this is going to hurt and and doctor it I think that the um order should be like you actually wrote them so first this is going to be heard and then undoctored and um the first one is based on the on the diary and I was I was thinking about it and I I don't know how what was your first thought to actually start diary did you did you wanna did you did you approach something funny or something scary or did you did you didn't want to forget and you started to write it it's a very it's a very it's a very good question I think it probably started by it was it was definitely funnier at the start when I was writing it so you know I I went through shoe boxes and shoe boxes and folders and notebooks to to produce that book and there was I had obviously a lot more Diaries than ended up in there and most of it was rubbish I don't want people to to think that that's how I write every time I I go home and jot something did you write every day uh pretty much pretty much yeah but you're also you're obliged to as a doctor to keep your own records really yeah so but like medical records aside from the medical records we're a sort of urge to to write things down so you can reflect so if something didn't go well you know you write it down reflexes which is which is helpful enough of course but a lot of my Diaries were like did cesarean section number 247 you know that no one wants to read that no because but the thing and as the Diaries went on the trend was I would be more honest and open and I would talk about how I you know the bad stuff but initially it was mostly just the funny and I think what I was trying to do whether I knew I was doing it or not was I was looking for the light amongst the dark so if you have a day where exhausted and a couple of [ __ ] things happened then if I write down the funny one then you know that's that that's a good take home from the day and um uh so I think I think that's how it started but now now I know what the Diaries are there for and they're they're there to to help me and that's what I that's what I I write down uh I know that you had that kind of experience but if you can say about particular cases uh how it happened when someone actually recognized himself from the from the book and or from the TV series and it did he write you or did he just you know come with the lawyer and be like hey man don't don't talk about me and my case so um as you can imagine lawyers are quite heavily involved in producing a book based on medical Diaries and so what I what I what I do a lot is change there all the take one case take the clinical side of one case and the personal details of another you know so no one can identify themselves fully and to and to preserve the the core of the story exactly because it can't as soon as I start changing you know start starting to fictionalize it too much then I think the heart falls out of it and it's no longer so if I take to combine two cases like like when a car is an insurance write-off and they have to sort of take up the back of one car in the front of another so a lot of the stories are like that so hopefully that means that I never break patient confidentiality and it's very unlikely someone can however I got I got an email from someone saying ah if the title was something like I have recognized myself in your book so the story was as follows I was uh doing a cesarean section uh which is you know the main operation I've obviously did on on labor board takes two people two doctors to do the operation there's various anesthetists as well and the scrub nurses and midwives but there's two doctors doing it the surgeon and the assistant and um quite often you know you're short of staff on a labor Ward there's more than one emergency happening at once so what will happen is one doctor will do the cesarean and a medical student will assist and also it's a good way to learn be like what's that that's the uterus that's the bladder that's this blood vessel there's that ligament so yeah this is like 9 10 in the morning medical student assisting me I mean he was a student he'd been out the night before he could still smell the Jager Bomb on his uh on his on his breath and most people probably aren't aware of the sights and sounds and smells of uh sister infection so okay there's a lot of blood you can imagine you can imagine that and it's you know and if you're not used to seeing you know the insides of someone's abdomen pelvis that's you know so I would pass off I mean I'm fair enough yeah but and there are the sounds because there's there's you know there's a bit of it's It's squidgy you know there's some noises like the the blood the amnesto needs to be suctioned out so these little Hoovers go so and the smell so the smell is because of what's called diathermy so more medical terminology which is like a pair of tweezers with an electrical current passing through them so if something's bleeding you go with the tweezers um and it's and it cauterizes it it's you know stop stops the bleeding it works um the same theory is you know sealing a stake on a you know it works first and it works faster but it has the same smell it is just it's you're cooking tissue yeah and it smells a bit like bacon anyway the sites plus the smell plus the sound meant that uh this medical student fainted as you suggested that you might in the situation which would be fair enough he fainted forwards and uh his face ended up in the patient's abdomen uh which wasn't wasn't ideal and so he got in touch saying unless this happened to you more than once I think I was that medical student and I was like oh yeah well to be honest yeah that was that was you but now this guy's working as a as a consultant an esthetist or whatever it is and he's probably too embarrassed to uh to ever tell anyone it was him so I think we got away with it sure wow um who's who's a better patient a man or a woman I know you work mostly you did work mostly with women but um I don't know I mean there are there are people of all genders races Heights weights descriptions who uh who are good and bad patients one thing I did learn the most important thing I probably learned working on labor board is to always trust the patients oh it's a fool of an obstetrician who doesn't listen to the person coming in saying the um my baby's not as I don't think my baby's growing right or might there's something up or my baby's not moving right or so I know something so that was that was a very important lesson that it's at your peril that you ignore a patient and in fact the way um the TV series starts basically is um we show a patient who we think is going to be the comic relief for the for the episode you know she's she's quite funny she's you know Adam's you know the character isn't taking her seriously and it's sort of it's a recurring joke and ultimately the character Adam the doctor dismisses her and doesn't take her seriously and that comes back to you know that turns from the funny moments to the very at the most dramatic moment and and I I hope that the medical professionals who watch that see the cautionary tale that you know and that starts an avalanche that sort of that you know that drives the whole series this you know this very sick baby who's delivered very prematurely as a you know you know mostly As a result of this doctor's mistake in ignoring the patient so um but yeah our doctors um all right with writing about their profession you know do they do they like what you what you did with the what's your story because this is your story yeah I believe you this is your diary your case but how about other guys from the profession I would say the reaction has been almost universally positive from from doctors um the the book was first published for a slightly political reason so that's six years ago in the UK the doctors ended up going on strike and it may be that the same happens in the in the near future because there's a similar situation Brewing but what happened was the government said this is your new contract sign your new contract and the doctors were like no we don't we don't like this and the government said the doctors are being greedy they want more money and that was a lie the truth was the contract was going to make the hours unsafe and it was going to impact patient care which is you know ultimately all those doctors actually care about and so watching that from the outside had already left Medicine by then I was I thought it was sort of almost heartbreaking but the public were believing the government with their big loud voice rather than the doctors who you know they've got a very quiet voice they're at work 97 hours a week how are how are they going to get their side of the story out so I thought that if I showed what it was like working on the front line then maybe next time round more people would would listen to the doctors when there's you know when they'd understand that they're not in it for the the money which is I think is a laughable you know concept if you know what's what it's like I mean when I was working there was one point when I was working where my hourly rates was lower than the parking meter outside the hospital no no I mean doctors I mean Americans in the UK are not cheap but not cheap but you you know you're you're you're your monthly pay packet is never terrible as a doctor but if you're working so many hours then if you if you work it out on an hourly rate you're like uh I should I should have been a parking meter um so and as a result of that I've had a lot of I've had some very very warm responses from uh from the profession and um and similarly I've had people in huge numbers say that until they read about me saying that I'd struggled and you know how I felt and they said they thought they were the first doctor who'd ever cried in a locker room had ever cried in a toilet and the truth is that almost every doctor at some point finds themselves struggling and like that and the fact that no one talks about it is that you know this same culture we've been you know talking about this this this whole interview and it's very it's very damaging so yeah it's been I've I've actually been really Blown Away by the by the reception I've had from my from my former colleagues and now you know I'm I'm a loud doctor I'm I'm someone who you know the radio stations a TV stations journalists are you know are in contact with and so um I stay in touch with a lot of doctors and medical students so that I can if I'm asked to represent them then I can do it you know fairly um that's a fairly political question but I I've never thought about it it actually brexit changed something in the NHS or Public Health in the UK up until now yes I mean brexit's a disaster and it's it's an act of self-harm that the country did and I don't I don't understand it and uh not just economic self-harm and social self-harm but the NHS as with so many Healthcare Systems around the world is a Melting Pot of you know people from dozens and dozens hundreds of different countries and whether or not the rules change to make people say I am no longer allowed to work here I think the biggest shift was people feeling unwelcome like why should I be working in this country which is suddenly become xenophobic suddenly saying you know we I don't know and and this is only anecdotal because it's only I don't know what the statistics are but I certainly know multiple people for people I can I can think of friends and Friends of Friends who've who've who've left the UK and just thought no I'm staying here why would I and I don't know I think it's I think it's very sad and I think when they when they write the history books about you know that period in the of time in the in the UK I don't think I don't think many people have a good word for for brexit even the people who are championing it at the at the time now are being a bit sort of cagey about that yeah I think so too um oh it's so optimistic conversation right let me say again these books these two because I'm going to talk about these in a minute but these two books they're like hilarious most of the time if you if you if you are not scared about you know medical stories but they're funny uh as you can see it's not only fun in inside uh all right A D shoe I haven't read them yet but you're not the right age I'm not the right age I let's look at the look at the covers it's for kids for how old so um these are I mean I say I say it's not for you but we say it's I'm sorry it says seven to seven to twelve I think for me but what I found is so um so it's basically about the about the human body and how everything works and how it sometimes doesn't work and all of that and um I've had so many messages from from parents yeah going turns out I never understood all of this stuff and uh and so I think it's secretly for the parents who weren't quite concentrating at school and again like that's a confidence trick you know we're saying it's going to be funny and then I'm actually you know sticking a sticking a knife in and it's it's painful in places those are a trick too because it says you know it's funny and it's disgusting and it's silly and it is those things and the kids read it because they like all the you know the bodily fluids and everything but um it also teaches them not just the stuff they need to know to pass their science exams which is you know quite important I guess but much more importantly about their own bodies and also um about why they've got asthma why their friend in their class has got epilepsy about neurodiversity autism about body image smoking drugs or the important stuff and if I can make them trust me you know through my silly jokes I can slip that stuff in there and they'll start to have the you know start to think about this you know these big issues which are often you know difficult for parents to to talk with Children Of course absolutely and also I've got the advantage I'm I know that kids quite often Ambush a parent who has to suddenly like come up with an answer I've as well as as well as being able to write it you know in my own time I've got the I've had the ability to speak to various experts and work out you know exactly how to pitch it for the for the age range and uh I think um I think we we need to understand our bodies better it's like I think it's it's crucial but I think it's it's often like it's like the instructions of the TV well I'll just I'll throw that away I'll work it out and we're like that with our with our bodies we need to know the instructions we need people lives are lost every minute of the day from people dismissing things they should take seriously and that's because you don't know how you that's you know you have to do Public Health campaigns to say you know these are the symptoms of a stroke these are the symptoms of a heart attack watch out this is stuff you should know from from early on at school I'm sure of it it's so important you need to know you know what the like on the dashboard of your car you need to know when there's a flashing light so you can go and take it to the mechanic absolutely you're absolutely right I'm gonna read the Polish titles for uh those of you who are just listening not watching us to handsome fellas so the titles of the of the other books for kids are foreign I hope you got all of that oh yeah yeah remember that yeah how do you how do you like Poland this is your first time here or it's my third time it's your third time do you remember the other two or they were they've all three have been relatively short uh visits um because they've they've been related to coming out and talking about my books oh okay uh that's quite recent trip yeah yeah so it's it's recent but um uh I'm of polish stock myself I mean uh my you know my my grandparents were you know and their parents were uh were immigrants oh really from Poland Jewish immigrants uh that's at that time you know from which part of this Poland I'd love to be able to answer that question no problem uh I'm gonna I can text my dad later and let you know no problem add it to the notes um the um um so their surname was uh strokovsky and uh I'm probably pronouncing that very badly but and that's you know with this key at the end yeah it's polish I know that and that's um and that's got shortened as these you know names often do when they're anglicized to to K yeah and so um and I uh uh so I I should spend more time here I I know two things I know that I like your food very much and I like your alcohol so that's two very strong reasons to come back great I'm very happy so you you yeah come back as often as you like uh the weather is gonna be warmer as you may expect from this part of the world year by year so it's not like uh like a couple of years ago is is Poland really that cold no it's not not anymore yeah it's never gonna be let's go give it five years it'll be tropical we're gonna have oranges on the streets definitely yeah but give the give it like another five years and in the UK you'll find bananas yeah I think the UK we're in Ireland we'll be underwater by then oh you may be right maybe right yeah Adam thank you so much for for talking it was it was pleasure um good luck with the books good luck with your tour you I think you have your UK tours yeah going on right yeah so touring at the moment thanks so much for for having me it's been really fun thank you very much and uh one last question I ask uh all of my guests goes like this if you could meet yourself at the age of 15 what would you say to yourself I would say at some point you're going to hear of a very small company called Tesla sell everything you own make your parents sell their house and put it all into shares in that company trust me it's going to be worth it very good point thank you so much thank you thank you

2022-11-21 07:18

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