Every Friday, Pulse - voices from the heart of medicine (www.pulsemagazine.org) delivers its online readers one compelling first-person story or poem about health care. Intimate and powerful, these writings by patients and doctors, caregivers and nurses, mental health professionals and students capture real-life health care in a way that is honest, pointed and unique - opening a window into medicine at a time when millions are calling for change in the way that health care is conducted. Now collected together in a book - Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine - The First Year, edited by Paul Gross, MD and Diane Guernsey - is every issue of Pulse's first year.