It needs money spent and it needs money spent in the right places. It’s something no amount of soundbites are going to sort. The NHS is 110,000 members of staff short at the moment – we can all work out where the problem is. Everyone’s thinking, I can’t do this for ever. What’s the mood like at the moment? I’m not sure I know any doctors who don’t have a Plan B now. You often hear from people working in the NHS. Doctors have been saying for years that all it’s going to take is one really bad winter and things are going to fall apart. It was impossible to fully prepare for the catastrophe that unfolded, no one would have that level of slack, but we had a system that was in minus slack already. And that was before the pandemic.ĪDAM KAY: Everyone was running on empty and it turned out those were the good old days. THE BIG ISSUE: When we last spoke, we were talking about the NHS being in dire straits. So we arranged another consultation with Kay.

Waiting times for operations are longer than ever, staff shortages are at record levels and many see an existential threat to the NHS on the horizon. Two years in, the adaptation of Kay’s bestselling 2017 memoir This is Going to Hurt – with Ben Whishaw in brilliant form as the fictionalised Adam, an exhausted, stressed, overworked and under-supported acting registrar – arrives on BBC One at a worrying time for the NHS. Little did any of us know that we were on the verge of a global pandemic. The NHS, the doctors, nurses and all other workers within it, he told us, were running on empty. He explained, with quietly restrained fury, how every day was like Christmas in the NHS – and not in a good way, not as something to celebrate, but rather because on a daily basis there were barely enough staff to cope. The last time Adam Kay spoke to The Big Issue was towards the end of 2019.

Dr adam kay this is going to hurt