From Physician to Patient to Reinventing Medicine

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

From theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology, this is The Bob Harrington Show. Dr Robert Harrington is the Arthur L. Bloomfield Professor and chair of medicine at Stanford University. This podcast is intended for healthcare professionals only. Any views expressed are the presenter's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of WebMD or Medscape.

Robert A. Harrington, MD: Hi. This is Bob Harrington from Stanford University on theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology. Those of you who have listened to this podcast series over the years know that one of the things I routinely like to do is talk with physician-authors. Sometimes it's people who are prominent essayists and other times it's people who have written books.

I do it for a couple of reasons. Number one, I'm a very dedicated reader. I'm always reading. I always have a stack of books either at my bedside or on my iPad. I really enjoy the pleasure that reading brings to me, whether it's fiction, biographies, or historical novels. It really does give me a break from my day job, if you will, to really concentrate on the imagination that others bring to their work.

I particularly have enjoyed interviewing physician-authors because I'm fascinated by that.