This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor is a nonfiction book by the British comedy writer Adam Kay, published in 2017 by Picador.

Kay accomplishes this by incorporating humour into his personal anecdotes that depict his life as he progresses through his medical training, and his eventual resignation from this career.

[1] This Is Going to Hurt is mostly composed of diary entries Adam Kay wrote during his medical training under the National Health Service.

It was recommended to Kay to write this diary as a "reflective practice" in which he could log any interesting clinical experiences he experienced throughout his training.

His diary entries in his time as these positions describe multiple successful births, failed births, infertility problems, and sexually transmitted diseases/infections, along with a gruelling workload that included sleepless nights, unpaid overtime, minimal gratitude from co-workers, sleeping in the car park, and inability to have someone cover a shift leading to minimal holiday and sick time.

Throughout these experiences, Kay recalls times in which he gets close to quitting due to the vast amount of stress the job inflicted on his life, harming his health and social relationships.

In the diary, Kay takes note of the increased responsibility that came with the promotion and how it added a new form of pressure since he was now supposed to be the person contacted in severe emergencies, where the Senior House Officer and Registrar were unable to solve the problem.

The detached placenta caused heavy haemorrhaging; Kay and the senior consultants called into theatre failed to stop the bleeding and, after 2 hours and 12 litres of blood loss, a hysterectomy was performed.

Not only did Kay make a mistake by missing the diagnosis of placenta praevia, but he had previously slightly cut the cheek of a newborn baby during a caesarean, mainly due to lack of sleep during his night shift.

The social importance of the book is stressed in the review as being "vital and timely; it should be required reading for anyone who ever has any political or financial responsibility for [England's] health services.