New this month to the Medical Humanities website is a series of online polls. The polls will appear once a month and provide an opportunity for you to share with others your experiences and thoughts about the interaction between clinical practice and medical humanities. As well as being asked to answer a simple yes/ no question, you’ll also have the chance to leave a comment and to read comments left by others. The first poll gets straight to the heart of medical humanities by asking whether individual patient stories have affected the way you practice medicine.

Whether you answer yes or no we’d love to hear any comments you might have. Perhaps there is a particular patient encounter that you still remember many years later and that still affects, for good or bad, the way you respond to similar situations. Or perhaps you think that hard cases make bad medicine and that letting individual patient stories affect the way you practice is unhelpful in these evidence based days.

Whatever you think, and whatever your experiences and viewpoint, we’d be delighted if you’d follow the link below and take part in our first online poll. And while you’re at it you might like to read the current Editor’s Choice available for free, or, if you’re not already a subscriber, why not sign up for a free 30 day trial of all the online content for Medical Humanities.

http://mh.bmj.com/content/current