Some of the statistics describing the “best” hospitals for a given type of surgery are available to the public, but performance measures for individual doctors are generally not. Ask for your surgeon’s complication rate before your procedure, Dr. Ruggieri suggests — you will have to assume the answer is truthful. And if you want to know what really happened while you were asleep, track down the operative report (although even that document may not reflect all the potholes on the trip).

It must be said with some emphasis that creating realistic dialogue is not Dr. Ruggieri’s forte, but the reader will forgive him the stilted paragraphs he encloses in quotation marks for the immediacy and honesty of the rest of his narrative. He offers up the requisite anecdotes featuring hapless people impaled by various pointy objects (including the horn of an annoyed rhinoceros), but he is at his best describing his own worst moments, muttering under his breath to a recalcitrant section of intestine, his right eye twitching in anxiety, wondering why he didn’t go for that M.B.A. instead.

A preoperative patient might prefer to leave Dr. Ruggieri’s book at home until it is all safely over. Elizabeth Bailey’s book, by contrast, is specifically meant to be included in the hospital suitcase, a marketing gimmick that is not a bad idea at all.

Checklists for doctors to complete have been shown to reduce errors in the hospital; Ms. Bailey offers a collection of checklists for a patient to complete toward the same end. There are lists for “before you go” and “during your stay,” various ways to organize the cupful of unfamiliar medications left by your bedside, and sections for planning your escape and coping with your insurance. While it would take an unusually energetic sick person to fill it all out, the book will be a godsend for concerned friends and relatives trying to rein in the chaos.

And for a little background reading, no one should miss Ms. Bailey’s introductory essay: A producer of music videos, she was thrust into the role of patient advocate when her elderly father was systematically manhandled by one of New York’s great teaching hospitals. Bravo to her for turning that all too common misery to a constructive end.