Infection in Hospital - a Code of Practice

!NFECTION IN HOSPITAL A CODE OF PRACTICE. Edited by G. L. Gibson. (Pp. x+101. £1.25). Edinburgh and London: Churchill Livingstone, 1971. This excellent little book should be read by all doctors, nurses and administrators who work in hospital and I am only sorry that it is presented in rather too lavish a format with stiff covers so that it is both too large and too heavy to carry in the pocket. It contains all those details which need to be known about preventing and dealing with infection in hospital which cannot be found easily in a textbook. It is the sort of information which should appear in the 'Hospital Handbook' which is issued to new house officers and which usually only contains normal biochemical values and details of how to do complex investigations. This book tells you how to deal with a case of typhoid, what antiseptics are to be used for cleaning lavatory seats and how to test a new autoclave. It contains an outline policy for the use of antiseptics and antibiotics in the hospital environment without building up any risk of virulent 'hospital' infections. What is most important is that the information is up to date and is applicable to current hospital conditions and not to some Utopia where all patients are in single isolable wards with their own toilet facilities and there is an ambulance of bacteriologically pure nurses. The contents are brief, concise and dogmatic; most readers will disagree with a sentencc or two here and there but few will disagree with the whole. It will need revision as hospital facilities improve and new antiseptics, antibiotics and methods of sterilisation become available. But the revision will only affect the detail: the principles behind this book have been tried and proved effective in hospital practice over the last 10-15 years. It is a fitting memorial for Dr. George Gibson's period of work as bacteriologist to the Belfast Group of Hospitals. P.C.E.