Abstract Within the (Critical) Medical Humanities, narratives by physicians investigate their professional knowledge and biomedical expertise by integrating non-medical aspects within healthcare practices. Recently, several TV drama series have concentrated on the personal and professional lives of doctors. Among them, the British show This is Going to Hurt (2022) explores the emotional impact of high-stress work and institutional pressures in public healthcare. Weaving together the mundane with the extraordinary and challenges with joys, rather than solely emphasizing the heroism in medical practice, the narrative delivers realistic insights into the lives of medical professionals. To demonstrate that the professional burnout among its characters reflects deeper, systemic issues of “lack of care,” this article examines the ever-increasing demands of care imposed upon doctors as depicted in the show. It further argues that expectations of efficiency limit the possibilities of empathy within the system even for colleagues and oneself. The neoliberal justification of this “lack of care” is often internalized, defended, and cultivated as essential to professional survival and success. However, the systemic inability to address such issues remains deferred. Finally, with the incorporation of concepts from different disciplines, the article concludes that the show’s narrative embodies a (literary) ethics of care. The article argues that the show contributes to a discourse of resistance by enabling storytelling of the “wounded storyteller” to witness (and recreate) the suffering of the caregivers.
Sakshi Srivastava (Thu,) studied this question.