What is a rheumatologist?

What Is A Rheumatologist?

Linda Bradbury
Nurse Practitioner, Rheumatology, University of Queensland
President, Rheumatology Health Professionals Australia

The general practitioner is an excellent person to be able to see when you’ll first want to see somebody about your joints. But the rheumatologist is a specialist that knows everything there is to know about joints and arthritis.

Assoc. Professor Peter Youssef
Rheumatologist, Royal Prince Alfred Institute of Rheumatology and Orthopaedics, Sydney
Chair – Arthritis Australia Scientific Advisory Committee

A rheumatologist is a medical specialist with an interest in arthritis. They have expertise in diagnosing and treating arthritis. They also have access to medications that other doctors don’t have access to for the treatment of arthritis.

Dr. Samuel Whittle
Rheumatologist, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide

Rheumatologists are not surgeons. Our main expertise is in diagnosing rheumatological diseases and then in managing them. Usually with prescription medications.

Dr. Irwin Lim
Rheumatologist

A rheumatologist has many roles. I think when you first see a rheumatologist they either want to make the diagnosis or at least clarify the diagnosis. So that’s an important initial role.

Dr. Samuel Whittle
Rheumatologist, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide

The role of the rheumatologist in someone who appears to have a disease such as rheumatoid arthritis or psoriatic arthritis or ankylosing spondylitis is twofold. The first job of the rheumatologist is to help make the diagnosis. In many cases this can be straightforward and in many cases this is actually very difficult, and that’s really where the expertise of the rheumatologists lies.

Dr. Mona Marabani
Rheumatologist
President, Australian Rheumatology Association

What we do generally when a person comes to see us for the first time is we talk to them. We get an understanding of what their symptoms have been about. We get to know a little about what other things are wrong with them, what treatment they might be taking for other diseases, what they do for work, how their symptoms have affected their day-to-day life, and then we’ll follow that up with a full physical examination. So we will look at all your joints, we will listen to your heart and feel your tummy and listen to your lungs. We will do a very full examination to try and determine at that first level what group of diseases your problem might fit into. And then we would undertake to determine how best to investigate this so we can be as specific as possible about what’s wrong with you so we can give you the best information to enable you to make good decisions about how your treatment should unfold over a period of time.

Linda Bradbury
Nurse Practitioner, Rheumatology, University of Queensland
President, Rheumatology Health Professionals Australia

They will look at you as an individual and be able to assess and work out what exactly is going on with your joints. So they should be able to give you, in most cases, a diagnosis of what’s actually happening and then be able to organise the best treatment for you.

Dr. Samuel Whittle
Rheumatologist, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide

The second role of the rheumatologist is then once the diagnosis has been made is in helping to develop a management programme with the patient that best treats their disease, and gets the inflammation under control as quickly as possible.

Dr. Irwin Lim
Rheumatologist

The rheumatologist is a central person in helping manage your inflammatory arthritis. They will work with a range of health professionals including your general practitioner but their main role is in giving you information and guidance about how these diseases are going to affect you and also in negotiating the use of medications to control the inflammation that we see in these diseases.

Assoc. Professor Peter Youssef
Rheumatologist, Royal Prince Alfred Institute of Rheumatology and Orthopaedics, Sydney
Chair – Arthritis Australia Scientific Advisory Committee

You will often need to see the rheumatologist frequently early on in the course of treatment until the disease is controlled. The rheumatologist will liaise closely with your general practitioner. The rheumatologist is part of a team and works with you and the general practitioner to treat you and to control the disease. Your rheumatologist may also work with physiotherapists, with dietitians, and with other people that may be involved with your management.