It was an illness in her family that led Dr. Leslie Vogel to pursue a career in medicine. “When I was young, my father had a rare disease which was misdiagnosed,” she explains. “That made me want to study medicine so I could understand his illness better and learn more about how these rare diseases are diagnosed and treated.”

At Reliant, Dr. Vogel’s primary interest is Consultation Psychiatry and Neuropsychiatry. “I work closely with a variety of clinicians, including the internist, the surgeon, and the rehabilitation staff to help patients,” she explains. Dr. Vogel says that the main problem she treats in geriatric patients is agitation. “Agitation can be due to anxiety, medication, or a neurological, immunologic, or metabolic illness. So that’s one of the most challenging things to treat, because it’s disruptive to others and often frightening too. You don’t always know what the source of the discomfort is, so you just have to do your best to maximize diagnostic accuracy, and treat it as conservatively as possible.”

One of the things Dr. Vogel enjoys the most about being a psychiatrist is getting to know her patients well and then figuring out what is going to make them feel better. “It’s important for older patients to have someone to connect with so they can tell you what is bothering them,” she explains. “Seeing their face when that weight is lifted off them, that’s the best part for me. The patients actually help teach you when you are treating them. They show you what works, so you really learn a lot from them.”

In her spare time Dr. Vogel enjoys listening to music and taking walks outdoors. She is also very interested in studying different types of art and architecture, as well as the history of medicine.