Collections

Pulse – “Voices from the heart of medicine” – describes its mission this way:

Pulse tells the story of health care through the personal experiences of those who live it–patients, health professionals, students and caregivers. While medical care is often rightly criticized for being cold and oblivious, Pulse highlights the humanity and vulnerability of all its actors. In doing so it promotes the humanistic practice of medicine and encourages advocacy for compassionate health care for all.

There are many types of health narratives posted here, with new ones appearing frequently. Most are written by health professionals, but many come from patients or caregivers. Categories of work published here include Stories (first person narratives), Poems, Haiku, Visuals (images with brief explanations or captions that together create health narratives), Encounters (oral histories), New Voices (first person narratives “by those whose faces and perspectives are underrepresented in media and in the health professions”), themed collections of narratives between 40-400 words (More Voices), Podcasts (stories already published on the site, read by their authors; varying lengths), a robust search engine to sort through the collection, and a subscription option to have brief narratives arrive in your e-mail each week. Close attention to inclusion of diverse voices and experiences is evident throughout the collection, and none of it is behind a paywall. The site’s mission to ‘talk about health care the way it really happens’ in the US means that medical encounters and institutions dominate the stories; the variety means a teacher can find multiple possible items on just about any conceivable health topic.

Some items from this collection in the Hub, with commentary:
5 minute read, story from medical student: Heart sounds

10 minute read, story from adult child caregiver: (Not so) golden years

Poem: He was not the first dead man I X-rayed