Top 80 Adam Kay Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “The night shifts, on the other hand, made Dante look like Disney – an unrelenting nightmare that made me regret ever thinking my education was being underutilized.”

— Adam Kay

2. “So I told them the truth: the hours are terrible, the pay is terrible, the conditions are terrible; you’re underappreciated, unsupported, disrespected and frequently physically endangered. But there’s no better job in the world.”

— Adam Kay

3. “Friday 29th July, 2005 – I spend the entire night shift feeling like water is gushing into the hull of my boat and the only thing on hand to bail it out with is a Sylvanian Family rabbit’s contact lens.”

— Adam Kay

4. “You don’t cure depression, the same way you don’t cure asthma; you manage it. I’m the inhaler he’s decided to go with and I should be pleased he’s gone this long without an attack.”

— Adam Kay

5. “I notice that every patient on the ward has a pulse of 60 recorded in their observation chart so I surreptitiously inspect the healthcare assistant’s measurement technique. He feels the patient’s pulse, looks at his watch and meticulously counts the number of seconds per minute.”

— Adam Kay

6. “It’s like they got Accenture in to come up with the least appealing possible menu options.”

— Adam Kay

7. “Good news: physio have finally been to see her. Bad news: the entry reads, ‘Patient too drowsy to assess.’ I pop in. The patient is dead.”

— Adam Kay

8. “Almost any abdominal operation can now be performed laparoscopically, which is Greek for “much slower”, and involves inserting tiny cameras and instruments on long sticks through little holes. It’s fiddly and takes a long time to learn. Recreate the experience for yourself by tying your shoelaces with chopsticks. With your eyes closed. In space.”

— Adam Kay

9. “A new story in the paper about a hospital porter who’s been jailed for pretending to be a doctor for the last few years. Just finished one of those shifts where I wondered if I could get away with pretending to be a porter.”

— Adam Kay

10. “But unfortunately the depth of the lows is the price you pay for the height of the highs.”

— Adam Kay

11. “ENT is commonly known as Early Nights and Tennis – a good choice of specialty if you like a quiet Christmas. See also, dermaholiday.”

— Adam Kay

12. “Electrolytes are the salts in the blood – mostly sodium, potassium, chloride and calcium. If levels become too high or too low, your body has a way of alerting you, by making your heart stop or putting you in a coma. It’s clever like that.”

— Adam Kay

13. “They must have something that cannot be memorized and graded: a great doctor must have a huge heart and a distended aorta through which pumps a vast lake of compassion and human kindness.”

— Adam Kay

14. “There’s a plant in my garden where if you simply sat under it for ten minutes then you’d be dead.’ Job done: she bins the tablets. I ask him about that plant over a colonoscopy later. ‘Water lily.”

— Adam Kay

15. “It’s time to take the kid upstairs, so Colin nods to the mum and says, ‘Quick kiss before he goes off to theatre?’ She leans over and pecks Colin on the cheek. Her pride and joy is wheeled away, his own cheek sadly dry.”

— Adam Kay

16. “Registrars like to do this kind of thing now and again to show you they’ve ‘still got it’, like your uncle squeezing himself into his Speedos despite the gasps of terrified onlookers around the hotel pool.”

— Adam Kay

17. “The decision to work in medicine is basically a version of the email you get in early October asking you to choose your menu options for the work Christmas party. No doubt you’ll choose the chicken, to be on the safe side, and it’s more than likely.”

— Adam Kay

18. “Full marks to the anaesthetist wearing a badge that says; ‘He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake’.”

— Adam Kay

19. “The final patient of a comically busy prenatal clinic requests an elective cesarean section because of a previous traumatic vaginal delivery. This is a fairly common request – principally because there’s no such thing as a nontraumatic vaginal delivery.”

— Adam Kay

20. “Doctors must be psychologically fit for the job – able to make decisions under a terrifying amount of pressure, able to break bad news to us anguished relatives, able to deal with death on a daily basis. They must have something that cannot be memorized and graded; a great doctor must have a huge heart and a distended aorta which pumps a vast lake of compassion and human kindness.”

— Adam Kay

21. “He’s just asking for my address – he wants to send me a wedding invitation. I’m choked up that he’d think of me, and very much looking forward to intending to go, then pulling out at the last minute due to work.”

— Adam Kay

22. “From the most insignificant of actions can come the most serious of consequences.”

— Adam Kay

23. “The other thing I realize is that none of her many, many concerns are about herself; it’s all about the kids, her husband, her sister, her friends. Maybe that’s the definition of a good person.”

— Adam Kay

24. “Apricot stones contain cyanide,’ he replies drily. ‘The death cap mushroom has a fifty per cent fatality rate. Natural does not equal safe. There’s a plant in my garden where if you simply sat under it for ten minutes then you’d be dead.’ Job done: she bins the tablets. I ask him about that plant over a colonoscopy later. ‘Water lily.”

— Adam Kay

25. “Think about the toll the job takes on every healthcare professional, at home and at work. Remember they do an impossible job, to the very best of their abilities. Your time in hospital may well hurt them a lot more than it hurts you.”

— Adam Kay

26. “You work yourself to exhaustion, pushing yourself beyond what could be reasonably expected of you, and end up constantly feeling like you don’t know.”

— Adam Kay

27. “A new midwife supervisor, Tracy, has started this week and seems absolutely lovely – calm, experienced and sensible. She is now the second midwife supervisor on the unit called Tracy, the current one being a flappy, angry nightmare. To avoid confusion, we have nicknamed them ‘Reassuring Trace’ and ‘Non-reassuring Trace’.”

— Adam Kay

28. “Today a notice has appeared in the changing rooms: ‘Staff must under no circumstances wear Crocs footwear as the holes do not provide adequate protection from falling sharps.’ A frustrated personal stylist has added underneath, ‘And they make you look like a douche.”

— Adam Kay

29. “Shouldn’t we feel sorry for someone who has so little else in her life that she can be so totally floored by the death of her pet?”

— Adam Kay

30. “I missed what the argument was about, but a woman storms out of gynae outpatients screaming at the clinic sister, ‘I pay your salary! I pay your salary!’ The sister yells back, ‘Can I have a raise then?”

— Adam Kay

31. “I ask why. then remember why most people do most things, and thus find myself introduced – at the tender age of twenty-four – to the sexual kink of mummification.”

— Adam Kay

32. “For me, the true miracle of childbirth is that smart, rational people with jobs and the ability to vote look at these half-melted fleshy blobs, their heads misshapen from being squeezed through a pelvis, covered in five types of horrendous gunk, looking like they’ve spent a good two hours rolling around on top of a deep-pan pizza, and honestly believe they look beautiful. It’s Darwinism in action, an irrational love for your progeny.”

— Adam Kay

33. “Of course, the job would be difficult emotionally when things went wrong – not every story has a happy ending – but the depth of the lows is the price you pay for the height of the highs.”

— Adam Kay

34. “Asked to review a patient in labour ward triage and repeat a PV as the midwife is uncertain of her findings. Her findings were of cephalic presentation with cervix 1 cm dilated. My findings are of breech presentation, cervix 6 cm dilated. I explain to mum that baby is bottom-down and the safest thing to do is to deliver by caesarean section. I don’t explain to mum which part of the baby the midwife has just stuck her finger in to 1 cm dilatation.”

— Adam Kay

35. “The problem with being in a bubble is that it only takes one prick to burst it.”

— Adam Kay

36. “When someone you know dies, your memories become the buffer between you and the abyss, the residual glow of your shared experiences still shining the tiniest particles of light into your darkness. They were here, you were together, and their memory prevails for as long as you’re alive to keep it.”

— Adam Kay

37. “Patient RO is twenty-five years old and thirty weeks into her first pregnancy. She complains of a large number of painless spots on her tongue. Diagnosis: taste buds.”

— Adam Kay

38. “This year we’re doing Christmas on my next day off: the sixth of January. ‘Just think how reduced the crackers will be by then!’ was the only positive I could offer.”

— Adam Kay

39. “But it’s a Saturday night and the NHS runs a skeleton service. Actually, that’s unfair on skeletons – it’s more like when they dig up remains of Neolithic Man and reconstruct what he might have looked like from a piece of clavicle and a thumb joint.”

— Adam Kay

40. “But promise me this. Next time a government tries to denigrate doctors or take a pick ax to the healthcare system, don’t just except with the politicians feed you. Think about the toll the job takes on every medical professional, at home and at work. Remember that all of them do an absolutely impossible job to the very best of their abilities. Your time in the hospital may will hurt them a lot more than it hurts you.”

— Adam Kay

41. “My bleep goes off – it’s the morning SHO asking for handover. I’ve spent two hours in this room, the longest I’ve ever spent with a patient who wasn’t under anaesthetic. On the way home I phone my mum to tell her I love her.”

— Adam Kay

42. “Our weekends were usually spent at work. But it’s more than just the hours; you’re generally no fun to be around when you got home. You’re exhausted, you’re snappy from a stressful day and you even manage to deny your partner their normal post-work chat of bitching about their colleagues.”

— Adam Kay

43. “Thank God we’re raising a generation who are so comfortable getting naked online. ‘I’m afraid it looks like you’ve had a stroke. No, my mistake, you’re just buffering.”

— Adam Kay

44. “If I ever have to go to hospital, madam,’ one of the midwives calmly tells her, ‘I want to be seen last. Because that means everyone else there is sicker than me.”

— Adam Kay

45. “Baby delivered, and just as I was sewing up the uterus, the student fainted, face-planting right into the open abdomen. ‘We should probably give the patient some antibiotics,’ the anaesthetist suggested.”

— Adam Kay

46. “Reading back, it felt extreme and unreasonable in terms of what was expected of me, but at the time I’d just accepted it as part of the job. There were points where I wouldn’t have flinched if an entry read ‘swam to Iceland for antenatal clinic’ or ‘had to eat a helicopter today’.”

— Adam Kay

47. “In the UK we see the skyscraper-high bills in America as the Ghost of Christmas Future unless we fight to stop the NHS getting privatized. Politicians may act dumb, but they’re not, and we’ll be lured very stealthily into this particular gingerbread house.”

— Adam Kay

48. “I’m as big a fan of recycling as the next man, but if you turn a used condom inside out and put it back on for round two, it’s probably not going to be that effective.”

— Adam Kay

49. “What should I have brought to entice people into a career in medicine? Toy stethoscopes? Amniotic fluid smoothies? Diaries with all your weekends, evenings and Christmases handily crossed out?”

— Adam Kay

50. “I review her back on the ward in the evening and on leafing through her notes I see that her birthday is in two days’ time and she’ll most likely still be in hospital. I commiserate, despite the fact that I, too, will very likely be in a hospital for every single one of my birthdays until I’m too weak to blow out the candles, but she tells me that Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate birthdays or even receive presents.”

— Adam Kay