"Secrets of the White Coat" is the second novel by the Iraqi doctor and writer Hanan Al-Masoudi, following her first, "Five Women." This novel is deeply connected to its author, reflecting her field of interest and relationships stemming from her experience in the medical profession, with all its affairs and concerns. This is especially true when practicing medicine under abnormal conditions such as wars and sieges. The novel reveals the "hidden realities of the Iraqi medical scene in the nineties." In such a situation, a doctor must treat the patient as a cause: "My patient is my cause, which I feel, believe in, and would die for."

The introduction by Dr. Talib Al-Jalili is enough to understand the profound human sensitivity Hanan Al-Masoudi holds for the victims of war, the effects war leaves on the doctor as a human being, and the imprints illness can leave on the human body living with the anxiety of death, where the doctor becomes a call to life.

Dr. Al-Jalili says of "Secrets of the White Coat": "A new novel with which the doctor and writer Hanan Al-Masoudi adorns the pyramid of Iraqi women's literature... This time, our colleague Dr. Hanan reveals to us the submerged part of the iceberg with her usual courage and frankness... It is the world of the doctor and the secrets of their patients, and what is hidden in the souls of doctors and hospital corridors of positive and negative human factors, which the author presents with honesty and a captivating literary style that makes the reader unable to put the novel down before finishing it."

Dr. Al-Jalili continues: "This reminds me of the constant question a patient and their family ask after surgery about the number of stitches the surgeon left in their skin, without paying attention to what happened deep inside the wound and the patient's entrails, and what occurred before, during, and after the operation. How a doctor's day goes, the psychological state of the patient and their family, and how they behave when their loved ones fall ill or approach death—that is the submerged part of the iceberg."

This novel is the archive of a doctor, in which the author has managed to capture the overt and hidden aspects of the world of the doctor and the patient, and the immense difficulties they both faced during the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq.