Your take on this series is so interesting to watch! In particular because you recognised that Dr Adam wasn't completely just hard done by and did have some flaws in his treatment of patients WAY before I did as someone non-medical. I feel like the fact that you managed to almost predict this "twist" hammers home the point that the show is making.
I feel like part of that is because so many shows about doctors have people acting way way worse than this and it just being played off as comedic or their insane risks paying off and them being in the right
The sperm sample instead of a urine sample actually comes straight from the book. The show just added the spilling it on the phone. I hadn't read the book before watching the series. Was cool to read and spot everything Adam had pulled from it and the different parts he'd compiled from over the years or given to Shruti instead
I imagine that Adam Kay writing this would have had some difficulties, obviously for television some things will be dramatised, but he did not show himself in the most positive light throughout the show and observing those faults must be hard, but sharing them with the world on what will be an award winning series, that must be ten times harder. He shines a light on the wonder of the NHS and its failings. This show will stick with me and many others I feel, for a long time.
What worries me, and medical professionals I'm an outsider so please correct me if my take is wrong, is that we only seem to search for causes of how healthcare workers act on the last meters. What do we think people will do if we put them in 15h shifts, making big descissions about peoples health & lives and then only yell at about what they are doing wrong? From the outside if someone asked me if I would encourage my kids to become a nurse, I would propably say 'no' despite admireing the profession. Simply because I don't know how I would knowingly send my kids into a work enviroment that's designed to chew them threw and spit them out 😕
I love the insight this show gives in to the UK health system. I really felt I understood the pressures of overworked, understaffed and underpaid healthcare workers in the UK so well after this. Of course it magnifies certain aspects for entertainment, but it really demonstrates the pressures and circumstances under which people have performed these really tough jobs. That's also why I'm so happy to see you continue reviewing episodes; as each episode passes they make the point clearer and clearer. Thanks for giving your take on it, it's so interesting! Would definitely love to see your opinion on the last one.
I loved this series & love watching your views on it. I think because I have a habit of viewing NHS workers as super heroes (coming from a place of love), you can forget they’re human and still face the difficulties of life.
I love this point! Yeh we hold lots of professions up as superheroes - and with good intentions - but that comes with it a subconscious bias of self sacrifice and having everything worked out in our lives
It’s really sad especially now during the Pandemic how health care practitioners are being stretched thin and how patient care is impacted. No one wins in that situation.
In many countries, the healthcare system transitioned from state to private hands and they started running everything on a skeleton crew during good times and then started to cry when nothing worked in bad times as if it wasn't their fault... The staff and patients are the real victims here.
Unfortunately the pandemic has only further stretched an overstretched health service. Being overstretched is nothing new poor funding and staffing is a horrible mixture.
I'm amazed how much I related to this as a teacher- I think it's a job that has similar demands in that it is professional and you have academic/trained knowledge (like in my case maths knowledge) and a specific goal (teaching students x, y, z) but so much of the job is socioemotional and there is so much pressure (not often life or death but it can sometimes feel like that when you see kids who just don't have what they need and there is definitely the same cycle of being limited in what you can actually do, seeing problems day after day that you can't do anything about and feeling like you're failing in your vocation)- my first year of teaching was a fog of profound depression, I geuinely don't know how I survived- I would go into class completely shut down and not be able to respond normally to students (like even something as simple as the 'how are you?' in the morning, I struggled to say 'fine' nevermind descalation or chats with kids who needed me to really respond helpfully). In that year I was told by my head of department when I said I was struggingly- 'use your weekends, use your holidays' to prep, she never considered how broken I was. I really hope every profession has a push towards mental-health awareness I do see shadows of this happening in teaching but it doesn't help much. We need a fundamental shift in how we view peoples capacity to work effectively and the importance of work-life balance (shorter shifts, funding for more staff, I even think school/all workplaces should be reduced to a 4 day week (break day in the middle, 2 on, 1 off) as fulltime). Just because I functionally can do the hours and the extra hours doesn't mean it's healthy or that I'm able to be my best self. The same goes for the NHS. Just wish it wasn't so cronically defunded. I love teaching and I intend to do it for as long as I can but hopefully in a different context (smaller schools, private schools even, four days a week, also intervention (one-on-one with high needs kids) only- where you feel like you can actually give kids the time they need).
I think in many cases, such as when Dr Adam says "it's like being a vet" when the patient doesn't answer or when he calls the family member a prick, we the audience hear Dr Adam's internal thoughts that he doesn't say out loud. So I think he is being professional on the outside, but the audience hears him saying things on the inside.
As a husband to a wife who works as a social worker inside an NHS hospital, this series and your modern day insight has been amazing. The way you articulate the discourse between managers/admin/f**King consultants/receptionists/porters reallly highlights So much so, she watched the whole series with me, then your first Reaction vid.... She has a new job, It's the exact same job, doing adult social work, but in the community not the hospital. I don't want to spoil the next episode.... But you will need tissues x
I really love how much you talk about the psychosocial care aspects of medicine. It's so important and not really addressed very much because it's not as morbidly fascinating.
Last year, I took part in an OSCE as a "bad news" patient: the students had to tell me my 2 month pregnancy had resulted in a miscarriage, then go through the next steps of coping with it. One student sat down and just said "Well, your baby's dead." I was not actually pregnant at the time (obviously), nor have I ever been. But bloody hell. Being told something so personal THAT bluntly throws you massively. I was in so much shock from him phrasing it that way that I forgot what I was meant to be doing next for a minute. I sympathise with those parents entirely...
Your talk about on calls and empathy is so accurate - the worst is having to do DNAR discussions in the night or after a post take ward round. That conversation is difficult at the best of times but made even worse when you get called to put one in after they’ve said on the ward round “if deteriorated for TLC” but no one has actually said anything of the sort to the family. Then you (as the person who knows the patient least) have to do it because of pressure from the nursing staff and because there’s no one else to.
This happened to me. A young doc said to me that „it‘s only an embryo“ when there was no heart beat and I was crying. Her boss reprimanded her and said: „This woman has lost her child. It‘s her child not an embryo.“ That was over 30 years ago and I have never forgotten. This older doc was so empathic and I was grateful. I hope the young doc learned something that day.
after 6 years in my country's hospital system and another 7 years in primary care (the last 2-3 of which were in the midst of Covid, of course), I can absolutely relate to Dr Adam having completely lost his sense of altruism...
Bad advice by supervisors or superiors is more common than you think. You go to them with a problem they either say suck it up and do your job or if you can't keep up stop working in the healthcare. There's hardly any in between.
You have an excellent way of explaining (or correcting) the clips succinctly. I felt like you while watching it. I do love the dry caustic humour in the show, but I just find it hard when it's aimed at patients. There's lots of humour in the radiology department but it's always at the expense of each other or a situation, not the public.
this episode and some moments are much more dramatic than the book. Also Shrutis story was woven in from one short bit of the book. My favourite episode is the next one - really shows the beauty of the NHS
Love to hear your takes on this. I work as an acute SLT in a hospital and really feel for you guys in medicine as you really do work hard and deal with such difficult situations!
I love your videos especially your rapid fight scene diagnosis! Your way of elaborating on topics through both your own experience and research that you do for these videos in such a clear and understandable way is amazing! Can’t wait for your next upload!
I've always wondered why doctors (is it only is ER/emergency/hospital situations?) work 12-15 hr shifts. The long hours/compounding exhaustion seems like it would be a total detriment to the care they're supposed to be giving. Is is because there aren't enough doctors? Is it so that the patients see familiar faces/not as many people having to keep track of what a patient specific needs are? I'm probably missing something.
Our medical on-call shifts are always 12 / 13 hours so they can easily divided into a day shift team and a night shift team. Luckily in my emergency department the shifts are all 10 hours, which makes such a difference
The longer shifts enable two “handovers” between staff in every 24 hours. Patient safety decreases with more frequent staff handovers. In an ideal world the rota is such that you get enough rest between shifts and you are not doing extra shifts. Sadly the UK made decisions to train fewer staff during the late 90s and 00s so we now have a shortage. Takes 16 to 20 years to get a fully qualified consultant medic or surgeon Then because we are no longer a part of the European Union we are unable to employ new European staff unless they apply for a visa and they may also have to sit exams. While we were in the EU the qualifications were transferable. Visas are limited in number. We used to recruit from overseas and nurses could apply for family visas, but now there is a minimum income plus additional health fee per year and nurses don’t earn enough to bring their husband, wife and children with them. Even the starting salary for junior doctors is below the threshold. The most senior staff have almost been forced to retire earlier than planned due to a change in tax rules for pension funds. The workforce planning just didn’t make sense for decades.
As stated, its partly a safety issue. There's lots of research around industrial accidents showing that major incidents/disasters often happen around or just after a shift handover. Done properly, extended shifts can work really well.
When I worked as check in for urgent care… I often had to look things up to determine triage / urgency… I was brought in by IT after a shift for googling balanitis. 20 yo me didn’t know what it was and the patient refused to explain. I still feel embarrassed about it 15 years later. 😂
thankfully my google was on info tab and not images tab when I googled that. I often watch these while eating dinner, and it was good, but I wouldn't want to taste it again.
Speaking of the health system blocking websites, I work in the drug and alcohol area, and yes, there have been some issues about accessing certain websites or even receiving emails containing certain words. But those problems do seem to have been fixed now.
The show has captivated me, and your videos deepen my understanding and connection to the story. You hit the important elements and don’t waste time on trivial points. NOW: Where is Episode 7? Here in the US I’ve been able to stream only 1-6. Am eager for even the slightest uplift!
this show is really well done in showing the consequences of a doctor's actions. I see far too many medical shows where there doctors just get away with bad behaviour and illegal actions
Same with programming. Sometimes I wonder if I'm on a watchlist for searching up "How to kill a parent and not the child" or "Remove child from parent with fork"..normal stuff really..
@@abigailmillan1456 Basically the brains of the computer does different processes and those can have subprocesses. Sometimes it can be useful to separate a child process from the parent. That is done with what is called fork(). And sometimes the fork can kill the parent process and keep the child. ..I think..there's a reason it's searched so much, it's confusing af haha
@@ThistleBlue ooohh I think I know what your talking about Since English isn't my first language and I took a programming course a few years ago I completely forgot it 😅
I absolutely love listening to your views & takes on this show, and I hope you get through all the episodes, it goes places I didn't expect and I can't wait to hear your view on them.
I had something similar with a junior doctor. I had a laparotomy and was told I had stage 4 endometriosis. She then turned round and said that I was barren. And walked out.
Horrible illness, I hope you are okay from it. From doing these reviews I'm finding lots of people relating to the attitude they experience from healthcare workers, so something we can reflect on.
I'm happy to hear some liking for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs! I actually discovered them because a woman who played guitar and sang in a pub I used to frequent kept singing a couple of their songs. I think their second album, "Show your bones", was their best.
Personally, I'm torn between It's Blitz! (the first of their albums I ever listened to) and Show Your Bones :). I listened to them a lot in my early twenties and I still love the melodies and energy those albums have :) I've kind of lost track of them since, but I still listen to those albums from time to time.
I work in a teaching service within the NHS and our trust has just blocked a load on email domains, which means that around half of our students can no longer access our online Teams training.
In an ideal system the issues that Dr Adam is facing and the mistakes he’s making should be first met with a couple weeks paid leave and mandatory counseling to try and improve the underlying cause instead of just punishing the results of burnout.
@@davidwright7193 It's on british streaming services only not like hulu or netflix. You've to pay to use those British streaming services all the same. Unless they've a few other shows besides this one, I'm going to treat it like Paramount and not use it.
I've had coldness from drs I was in pain and going to the drs quite a bit but they just said I had anxiety. It was not in turned out to be a twisted ovary that was eventually discovered.
Thank you so much for these. I watched the series. Reread a lot of the book then watched it again. A lot of his comments are “ breaking the 4th wall” eg the words is this pr. .p? and “”feel lik a vet” but it isn’t always obvious( watch how Fleabag does it). In chapter 7 in book he talks about having to improve his bedside manner”. Perhaps he had worked with a consultant like the rude one. We also have to remember that he was already a comedian at that stage, maybe the labia joke was his? He also speaks about not getting training about dealing with grief when a baby is lost. Not meaning this to be critical, I do love to watch them. Apologies for raving.
Also used a track by Hooverphonic in an earlier episode, that is esoteric except for a European viewer. I would have used Agony by the Eels as the closing music following the burn out sequence.
Is this medical drama any good? The problem I have with medical shows is that often times they start out good but then it becomes less and less about medicine and more about relationships...
Adam’s other error, as well as do what he was advised, was not to report his consultant when the consultant asked him to retrospectively amend the notes. Curiously he never thinks ever to mention it at any point. Had he done so it could potentially make the difference between being erased from the register by the GMC (struck off) or some lesser sanction. I haven’t read the book so it may be that the series merely reflects it, but I was really disappointed with the episode at the MPTS (GMC’s fitness to practise tribunal service up in Manchester). They had filmed in the heading suites and, apart from Adam standing up and him and his lawyer not having a room to sit in, was pretty accurate in that respect. In terms of procedure and portraying in any vaguely reasonable way how the fitness to practise process works it fell very far short. A shame really, because it was a good opportunity for the public to be given an opportunity to understand how seriously dishonestly, even with substantial mitigation, it taken by the profession.
Yer, if someone was that non responsive with me, I'd ask if they needed a different gendered healthcare profession first. Then get grab a champion if they said they'd wanted to stick with me.
Hey doc, if you are interested I would like to recommend you to read the "Give My Regards to Black Jack" manga, the synopsis says something like this- Saitou Eijirou is a newly established intern doctor, who is forced to take on a second night job at another, much smaller hospital because of the extremely low pay he receives. As he bounces between the two different hospitals, he is forced to dig deeper and deeper into Japan's largely corrupted medical society and starts to question even his own initial beliefs about him, as he asks himself just what being a doctor means.
Doctor, I'd like to suggest a movie to review. The movie is called "The Last Duel". It depicts the last judicially approved trial by combat in French during the hundred years war. I want to know your opinion about the injuries suffered by the two dueling knights.
She most probably didn't. Most self-injurers don't use any kind of anaesthetic (I'm guessing you might be talking OTC lidocaine cream). She could of been drinking or taken some meds, but she doesn't look too intox so not necessarily. Self injurers have a markedly higher pain tolerance than healthy controls. They're also believed to have lower amounts of beta-endorphins in their brains, so there's a theory they make up for it with SI and aren't as affected by its undesirable effects (re: it hurts less for them). She's also suffering with body dysmorphia which is one of the most atrocious mental disorders you can have.
I don't understand why ladies are worried about how their downstairs bits look. They all look weird and they aren't for looking at. They're kind of like Playdough, but better; fun to play with and to eat.
Its partly a safety issue, it means only 2 handovers per day rather than 3, and shift handovers are known to be the time when serious incidents are more likely to occur
I really appreciate your reflections on the show. As a medical student, I enjoyed the book but found the show frustrating and depressing. The burnout, system dysfunction and poor bedside manner really put me off the show. I'm so glad I'm not the only one that was questioning some of the things Dr Adam says and does!!! I just hope I never experience the same things Dr Adam does.
It's funny 'cause a lot of the stories that people say that are unrealistic actually come directly from the diary, for example the kinder egg and the sperm sample stories Really, some of the stories might actually be toned down, particularly the sad ones, for example tha closest thing to "the incident" was by far harsher and completely explains how Adam felt and acted at the end of the diary's story Finally, I'm kinda worried about real life Adam who in the TV series chose to make stuff up about him being by far more of a prick than he actually was. In the diary Adam comes out as a responsible and well meaning doctor who was just way too tired, he was a somewhat condescending but you could feel that under it, there's an overly critical side that he doesn't quite wants to show
Conversely, "Imagine how hard it was for that pilot to save all those people given the size of his balls!" on pretty much every 'pilot/man/civilian saves someone's life' video and there's 10k upvotes. It's that kind of subversive sexism that makes us 'assume its a man'. Depressing. Courage is found in women and men (a better colloquialism is "they've got guts" or something less gendered).
She is a gynaecology consultant talking to an obs and gynae trainee. The phrase was “stiff upper labia” rather than “stiff upper lip” and actually means the same thing which Shuti will know. I found it quite funny and was very much in character for that consultant who is actually much more supportive than the other guy. It would have been even funnier to Adam as it would have had to refer to facial rather than genital lips.
I've never seen this show... don't think I will. Looks like it'll make me more depressed -.- I however LOVE Scrubs, so I'll always have that ♥ Check out "After Yang" when you can, Dr. Hopie, if you haven't already. 😏
@@nevilleneville6518 I agree about it being darker. I think this is for two reasons. lFirstly the humour doesn’t/can’t come across on TV ( he was already a comedian and did it full time after he quit medicine) but more importantly,as he now with has a much bigger audience, he is focussing more on demonstrating the huge inadequacies of the NHS because of shortage of staff..He has always been outspoken on this. See his videos on RU-vid
One thing you seem to be missing, and it is something the actor isn’t doing well, is the distinction between conversation (things actually said) and soliloquy (the characters internal thoughts). That is particularly true in the consultation scenes where I often thought that where you were seeing an unprofessional interlude in an otherwise acceptable consultation that the unprofessional bit his the character’s internal reaction to what is happening. That isn’t made clear enough and if it is the actor or the director I am not sure but it is the one piece of poor stagecraft in the whole production.
When he makes really horrible remarks, he is breaking the fourth wall, speaking to the audience. Is still cringe, but less so ....this are not meant to be heard out loud
I never see an unborn baby as anything than just a clump of cells... I don't understand why people get so worked up about it if they lose it early. if they went through 8 months of annoying baby mommy stuff it does get a bit disappointing but I wouldn't cry really. though I don't want a kid so I just feel horrible even at the thought of potentially getting my gf pregnant.
I see empathy isn't your strong suit. People often get very attached to their child before it's born. Then being told that a future member of your family is dead, especially a desired pregnancy and especially if it took a lot of effort or beat the odds (things like in vitro fertilization, PCOS, low fertility are common), is crushing.
I think a lot of it is about the anticipation of wanting a baby, and knowing the embryo has the potential to develop into a baby. They're imagining and expecting a child, so when the pregnancy ends, in their mind that child has died, and it makes sense they would grieve. If they really want a baby and have been trying to conceive for a long time, then losing a pregnancy, even very early on, is still a huge loss and very emotional.
For people who got pregnant by accident and either don't want a baby or are conflicted about what to do, the pregnancy spontaneously ending early on can sometimes feel like a relief. It depends on the person and what their hopes are. If it happened to you, you might not cry. People react differently, but grief is a common reaction.
@@SomeoneBeginingWithI I don't think I'll ever feel that way. I don't want a child. so I don't think I'll ever understand. though my reason is more logic based then anything else. why bring a kid in a world that he'll know how much pain there might be instore for him. that's just me. can't understand what you have never felt. I understand if the baby is already born but not before that. for me it's just a clump but fine. everyone and their own feelings.
I'm assuming you've only seen Dr Hope's reaction videos. I've watched the whole thing and I found it engaging and entertaining. I felt a variety of emotions in each episode.
