Orlando Eye and Oculoplastics

It was 2010 and Keshini Parbhu and her husband were driving from Atlanta back to their home, where she still had three weeks left in her fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The couple had interviewed for jobs in Atlanta, and the trip yielded a familiar outcome and a disappointing realization: Finding jobs they both liked in the same city was going to be a challenge.

Parbhu turned to her husband, ophthalmologist Deepak Raja, and said “Let's just do it. Let's start our own practice. We can make it the way we want it to be.”

Since that day, “We've just been moving forward,” said Parbhu, who opened Orlando Eye and Oculoplastics with Raja just 5 months ago. They are the only ophthalmologists in the Windemere area, and Parbhu is the only formally trained, full-time oculoplastic surgeon in Orlando.

Parbhu credits her parents with instilling the courage needed to make the leap of faith necessary to start her subspecialty practice at the age of 32.

Her father, Chuni, came to Redwood City, Calif., on a student visa to attend graduate school for engineering. “He worked three jobs while going to college,” Parbhu said, while living in a small apartment with other graduate students. He and his wife, Lata, moved Parbhu and her older brother, Rakesh (now a doctor of radiology in Miami), to Tallahassee, where they got into the hotel and motel business.

“My dad was the first in his village in India to come to the U.S. He had only a few hundred dollars to his name,” she said. “It took a lot of courage.” As an adult, Parbhu visited her dad's village and was awed to see how far he has come in life. The small house he grew up in “was basically four walls and roof. The floor was packed-down dirt,” Parbhu said. “He truly experienced the American dream,” she said. “I'm hoping I will be as successful as (my parents) were.”

To be sure, Parbhu also has worked hard to get to where she is. After graduating high school in Tallahassee, she majored in biology at Duke University. Upon graduation, she was accepted at Vanderbilt University, where she spent the next 8 years completing her MD, internship in general surgery and and residency in  ophthalmology. “Vanderbilt was the best school. It had the highest student satisfaction rate of any medical school. I knew I would get a good education there,” she said.

It was at Vandy that she formally met Raja, although they learned later that they had been in a few of the same at classes while attending Duke. Sharing a passion for their professions and Duke basketball, they married when Parbhu was a second-year resident and Raja was in his last year. They returned to her hometown to take their vows at Florida State University's Doak Campbell Stadium.

After Vanderbilt, Parbhu accepted a fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Two years later, she became one of only about 500 surgeons in the U.S. who have been certified in the past 20 years by the American Society of Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. That unique training sets her apart, Parbhu said.

“Years ago (ENT and ophthalmology used to be a combined field. Then the eye area got its own specialty. Now oculoplastics is going through the same (evolution). We are breaking out to become our own subspecialty,” Parbu explained. “If you're having plastic surgery around the eyes, you need someone who has this extra training.”

In addition to applying her intense surgical training, Parbhu is learning the ins-and-outs of running a business. “You learn how to be a doctor, but you don’t really learn how to start or run a practice … It adds a whole new component to things. But I like learning new things and it is so different from medicine and ophthalmology, which is refreshing,” she said.

Another component of her practice that is benefiting from her training is the implementation of an electronic medical records system.

“Since we are starting from scratch, we decided to go ahead and start with an electronic system,” Parbhu said. “I am revitalizing a study that I started at the end of residency (at Vanderbilt) comparing traditional hand-written medical record-keeping with template-assisted electronic medical record-keeping.”

 “We are all electronic in our office,” she said, but that undertaking has its challenges for ophthalmology and oculoplastics. “This is a very visual field. When we record things we draw a lot and take a lot of photographs,” she said. She is helping the information management company e-MDs tailor it for oculoplastics. “My needs are different from an internist or pediatrician. We need to be able to adapt. ... Our system is very customizable,” she said.

“Ophthalmology appeals to me because the eyes and the structures surrounding the eyes are so delicate and the surgery is so precise. There is a finesse to operating in this area that makes it challenging,” which Parbhu likes. “I chose oculoplastics because I liked the creativity involved in the reconstructive procedures with trauma and cancer excisions. On the cosmetic end, I like helping people be happier with their appearance. The eyes are the focal point of the face and doing surgery in this area can make a huge impact in giving a more rejuvenated appearance of the face,” she said.

Also, Parbhu appreciates that “my patients are generally healthier and they want to do something to improve their quality of life. A lot of specialities are about life and death, and there are certain mindsets that deal with that better. I fit into the quality-of-life mindset better. I like that I can make somebody see better and look better,” she said.

While Parbhu's skills are in demand at most area hospitals, including Orlando Regional Medical Center for trauma cases and Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children for pediatric cases, she operates often at Dr. P. Phillips Hospital.

“Phillips is a great hospital. It's a beautiful facility with a great staff. … They have a very high patient satisfaction rate there,” Parbhu said.

When she's not in the OR or seeing patients at her practice, Parbhu relaxes at the gym with weightlifting, spinning classes and yoga. She and her husband also love to hike.

When she has time, she wows her house guests with her signature dishes: Baked brie for the appetizer; blackberry chicken for the entree, and perhaps cupcakes – her favorite comfort food – for dessert. Dinner might be followed by a quick round of the video game Rock Band with Raja, under the watchful eye of their 14-pound Yorkie, Roark, who is the namesake of a character in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

Now Parbhu and her husband are ready to pursue a personal dream they have put off because of time constraints on their education and training: “Starting a family!” she said.

Her parents, no doubt, will be pleased by that next leap of faith.

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