“The Bitter Pill� by Doctor X is a small effort to improve the Irish hospital health system and, as such, is required reading by all interested and concerned persons.

This post is an unashamed plug for the book, published [2007] by Hodder Headline Ireland.

The author is an anonymous junior hospital doctor, concealing his (I say her) identity as Doctor X. Currently I have read only the chapter entitled “Dirt and Bugs�, but on the strength of that alone the Minister for Health will in future be unable to “spin� the shocking levels of nosocomial infections in Irish hospitals.

There is a depressing conclusion also; most intelligent lay persons would have no difficulty envisaging the state of affairs revealed by Doctor X in “Dirt and Bugs� (without the benefit of his/her revelations). When the Health Service Executive issue hospital “hygiene audit� results, they, as professionals, must already know what Doctor X knows and therefore they know that the hygiene audits are misleading as to the true state of affairs in hospitals.