Rheumatologist Alexandra Reese, MD

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]Both my parents are in medicine, and just growing up, dinner table conversations always revolved around what their days were like, and it was always something new.

[00:00:11]It was always interesting.

[00:00:12]I chose rheumatology because I was very interested in the disease processes initially, but then I fell in love with rheumatology when I realized the patient relationships you can have.

[00:00:24]We meet patients usually early in their life, even later in their life, but they are our patients pretty much forever after that point.

[00:00:33]So the continuity of care is really what made me choose rheumatology.

[00:00:38]Typically, I start off by saying, "I've reviewed your chart.

[00:00:42]I know a lot of the workup that's already been done, but I wanna hear from you.

[00:00:46]I wanna hear what your story is, what brings you to see me today, and what do you hope to accomplish from this visit," just so we can kind of set guidelines for what we want to have done for that visit.

[00:00:59]We have so many great treatment plans these days.

[00:01:03]We start a patient on a treatment, and hopefully, they're doing so much better and their quality of life has improved so much, but that can change over time.

[00:01:11]So typically, we like to see patients every three or six months and adjust treatments if necessary or just see how they're doing and make sure that they're doing so much better.

[00:01:19]I mean, that gives me so much pleasure, seeing patients being able to live their life and kind of let their autoimmune disease be in the background.

[00:01:27]I just want patients to feel very comfortable with me.

[00:01:30]I think that's one thing that I think is so important as a physician.

[00:01:34]We need to make sure patients feel heard.

[00:01:36]In rheumatology especially, we really need to focus on listening, and I think you can just learn so much about a patient and possibly their diagnosis just by listening to their story.

[00:01:46]I hope that my patients feel heard when they come to visit with me, and we can create a treatment plan together.

[00:01:54]Yes, I can give recommendations, but ultimately, it is their decision on treatment plans and things like that.

[00:01:59]So it's a combined effort with each other.

[00:02:02]The most rewarding part of my job is just being able to improve quality of life.

[00:02:06]I think that's kind of why I went into medicine to begin with, and I feel like rheumatology for sure, we definitely see that improvement.