I'm Christian Guru Murthy and this is the podcast in which we talked to extraordinary people about the big ideas in their lives and the events that have helped shape from my guest today is the author of one of the most successful books Off the last couple of years is called This Is Going to Hurt on DDE.

Perhaps more importantly, he it's a doctor was a doctor, and his book is about his life.

His junior doctor on dhe.

Why he ended up quitting.

Okay, welcome.

Thanks for having me.

Why did you want to be a doctor?

Did you were you were do gooder?

It's a good question.

I think about this a lot.

I think it was like the default setting If I didn't have a better idea for what else to do.

My family had doctors in it.

I went to the sort of school that churned out doctors and lawyers and architects and that sort of thing I was elected sciences on DDE.

To be honest, it's a decision you make when you're 16 you know, because the medical schools want you to have certain a levels and you choose those elephant.

That's a very bad age to decide to do anything, obviously let alone a whole career, particularly a career with the like, the emotional load that medicine has.

So I don't know what.

I don't have a good answer to that.

She didn't have a passion for us.

It wasn't a location.

Probably not it.

Not at 16.

It became my vocation.

And you know, ultimately you don't go to medical school unless you want to help people.

I mean, that's that's what it comes down to on that always has to be there, and that always, always was there.

But, I mean, you've got to be really committed.

You do.

I mean, it's a it's a long degree.

You know, all of your mates at university leave halfway through your your degree, and then it's a very, very tough job on Dhe, and I was definitely committed to it.

But ultimately I don't think I was.

We talk about informed consent in medicine.

You know, before you go and have your your operation on your eye, you know, they run through the risks as well as the benefits.

I don't think the risks there ever really explained when you're going into medicine on I didn't really know the emotional toll it would take you, I guess, make your living as much as a comedy.

Now, Um, yeah, I guess I'm technically a writer and a performer, and that sort of Yeah, I mean, I saw your stage show, which is the station of your book a couple of weeks ago.

It's an incredibly funny night.

Everybody loves it.

Were you always an entertainer?

I think I was always the class clown, but I think I don't have kids.

But I understand the concept of parents wanting the best for their their kids on DDE.

Even if I have worked out earlier on that, You know, I I was a creative type.

I wanted to be a writer.

My my parents, you know, from a old fashioned medical must have Ah, you know, monthly salary sort of thing would have steered me towards a inverted comma, sensible job.

But I certainly had to the virtues of medicine extolled, but I probably always waas a creative type, but interestingly, the medical schools want youto have like, extracurricular things.

So opponent is not enough.

Just to have a load of A's at a level.

If you go into any doctors mess in the hospital, you'll find, you know, the captain of the the hockey team in the cricket team and lacrosse players in Grade eight tuba players and oboe players.

Because that's what the medical schools wanted this sort of surrogate measure for.

Are you gonna be a good doctor?

They don't actually ask you relevant questions.

It's about you know, you any good at the over.

Do you think that they're good at filtering medical schools?

No, I think they're bad.

I think they asked the wrong questions.

So basically straight A's attainable.

I don't think I don't think the best doctors but the cleverest doctors.

It's not a job that where you're sort of calculating biochemical pathways.

It's a job you're communicating.

And I honestly think if you drop the grades to bees rather than a to get a better caliber of doctor and also you get doctors from a broader, you know, the border of spectrum of society, I think they should be specifically They should be very honest about what the job involves on.

Then recruit on those criteria like I get the occasional no angry, angry E mail or D m on Twitter from a parent saying, You put my son.

You put my daughter off medical school by reunite.

They read my book and then now that I wanted it good, because if that book's gonna put you off menace and if my show is gonna put you off, medicine and medicine is really gonna put you off of medicine.

They need thio.

They do ask the wrong questions like a friend of mine recently trained up as a train driver.

And as part of that process, they basically ask the question.

If the worst happens, someone jumps out in front of your courage.

Are you going to be ableto deal with it?

Because that can happen.

There's no such thing in medicine.

If you want to be an astronaut, a pilot that's part as part off it.

You know, under the under the lights of the metaphorical camera, you're gonna be all right if you want to be a doctor.

It's just got loads of A's right and and you the hockey.

But don't we need doctors to be really clever you because there is quite a lot of thinking they're not just communication, isn't is working out What's the right thing to?

Yes, but I think it's I think we've gone too far to one.

And I'm not saying we want our doctors to be, you know, stupid.

But I just think that there the better the best doctors aren't the cleverest doctors, and I do.

I do strongly.

I believe that.

I said I was used to worry that the cause I got a place at medical school and she dropped out of doing medicine.

Four.

Starting because I got a job in TV on Die similarly came from a family of doctors.

So it was just gonna do medicine.

Couldn't think of anything else to me.

Oh, I've never really had a passion for it, but always said I was gonna be a doctor.

I I was kind of felt that the sort of the the class swats could become doctors because all you had to do was get the exam results.

The class, What doesn't become the best Dr.

I really, really believe fact.

So were you surprised?

I mean, but by by what the job actually entailed wants you became a junior doctor Yeah, you already kind of worked it out during the course of your degree.

I hadn't hadn't hadn't worked it out on DDE.

Nothing really quite prepares you for.

I mean, it's like learning to be a mechanic just by reading the manuals you have to do.

You have to work in the first car for the first time, and I wasn't prepared for like that how difficult it was like, logistically, just It was like the hours, the effect it has on the rest of your life, which is one thing.

But it wasn't prepared for the emotional side of things because you can be in a communication skills lecture where they teach you.

You know what you do and don't do when you're breaking bad news, and it's a sign post its and don't say this, but that's very different to, you know, being bleeped away.

It's, you know, one in the morning toe have you know, the worst chat with with the family.

But the thing that really surprised me was the lack of a safety net, the lack of support when bad things happen, the fact that the culture is very much a stiff upper lip is not one about opening up talking about what's happened.

You go back home and, you know, they ask how your day was going.

Fine.

You're trained to say you're fine.

Your dad was a doctor?

Yeah.

Did he come home and, you know, decompress?

Or was it or do you think it was bottled up?

Um, well, my dad was a radiologist or is a radiologist.

He's still so I'm still working radio, just actually on Dhe.

So there's less drama, I suppose, in his, um, in his field because it's diagnostic on.

He's not dealing with people who are, you know, it's not Christmas.

Yeah, if you like.

So I don't think you have that same level off compressed emotion.

Yeah, in his in the course Wednesday, daily life.

But well, we would often argue about the sort of the value of what we were doing.

Very interested that you ate, that you ended up quitting medicine and working in the creative industries.

Yeah, because that's the argument I used to have with him about quitting medicine to work in the creative industries Used to have this arguments about the value of our work.

Look, the arts have absolutely enormous value that we do a very different thing.

You know, you're holding people to account.

You know, I'm making people laugh for making people think whatever, whatever it is.

And I strongly believe the value of the arts.

But it is so many steps removed from coming home.

Having saved a life, there's no yeah, there's no argument about that, No, on dhe.

But, you know, life's a big, you know, Big Jigsaw.

And, you know, pieces are important.

I mean, by way of instructions, people you don't know about the book or your story.

How would you?

Do you have a sort of a way of summing up what?

Your experience of medicine wars?

I spent 67 years as a doctor, and for most that time I was working on labor Ward Andi.

I worked my way up to senior registrar, which is 11 notch below consultant.

And so I was sort of reasonably, you know, I was reasonably far on my way to finishing my training, and I kept diaries whilst I was working, which in retrospect, was probably probably looking for the light amongst the dark.

It was in the absence off the system, helping me cope with the bad stuff.

I was doing it myself by writing down the silly stuff on the disgusting stuff.

It's mostly disgusting stuff, really.

But ultimately that didn't give me thick enough armor.

Enough of a buffer to deal with the absolutely terrible stuff on DDE without going into too much detail.

All you ever once on labor wards is a healthy mum, plus a healthy baby.

And I was the most senior doctor on the ward where sadly we ended up with with neither of those things on dhe, I realized that I couldn't cope with that kind of thing ever happening ever again.

And, you know, I'd ended up in the job that I I couldn't do on that.

There was no there was no riel support offered and and I ended up stepping away from medicine.

I thought I was only going to be away for six or 12 months whilst I I regrouped.

And but then I got I got lucky with the writing I was I was doing and I've I've not gone back to medicine.

Did you ever want to go back during that period, or was it just something you couldn't do it.

It really knocked the stuffing out of me.

What happened?

And I knew that if I was going back to medicine, I would It would have to be in a different specialty.

So it's something where that kind of I could never have that kind of day at work ever again.

Which meant going right back to their starts.

11 of the problems they have a medicine is you can't sort of move laterally between between the different strands you have to.

It's like snakes and ladders go right.

The way back to the bottom of the book is incredibly funny, and so is your show.

Did you find it funny at the time?

Yes, I think I think I did.

I think I did.

And I really I really focused on there on the funny because you need that, you know, when they say, Oh, how was your day at work?

But the truth is, a really horrible thing happened.

That's I'm just going to internalize.

And so but my answer was, you wouldn't believe you know what happens in 1980 clinic to Would you laugh?

Not at a patient's No, I I'm very good at poker.

What are the funniest things that have happened to a doctor?

I think my very funniest moment.

It but work was a woman who decided 1 February 29th to propose to her partner on dhe.

She did so by taking engagement rig and putting it in a in the kindergarten.

I'm putting that Kendrick internally and then hoping that her partner would retrieve it.

And then she would go down on one knee, blah, blah.

But unfortunately that Kendrick somehow managed to rotate itself lengthwise.

And no amount of Sugar Ling from either of them would get this particular Gusteau.

Let's golden egg on Dhe So?

But she refused.

Thio ruin the surprise.

Tell her, tell her boyfriend what was going on.

So we all met in a cubicle in any, And I was I retrieved the kindred relatively easily with a pair of forceps, but she didn't didn't tell me what was going on either.

So it was quite confusing when she asked him to open it.

Okay?

In the cubicle to cubicle it.

So I gave him a pair of later loves.

Sort of ruined any remaining romance on dhe.

Yeah, and she she proposed and he said, Yeah, he said it, Yeah.

How did she explain the Qin drag coming in the hospital?

Oh, she's People don't often.

They just say, What's wrong?

They say there's something is stuck and I'm not that I'm not there Toe to judge.

Um so you know it doesn't doesn't affect my management Quite how the kindergarten ended up there.

So you never you never ask, you would you would never say Well, how and why on earth did you do that?

I mean, you can Sometimes it's sometimes is it's relevant.

But we all know why the patients always come up with reasons for explanations For how things got.