Physician Profile: Priya Deshpande, M.D.
of CPC-Central
One of the first memories Priya Deshpande has of growing up in
India is concern for her sick grandmother. Only a small child at the time,
Priya recalls watching and listening intently when the doctor visited their
home. She felt sad and frustrated that she could do nothing to help her only
living grandparent, who was severely diabetic, wheelchair bound, and always
quite ill.
Watching someone she loved so much suffer with a debilitating disease was
perhaps the first seed of inspiration for Priya’s career in medicine. “I
felt an inner need to help her and others like her,” she explains. “My
parents have said many times that from a very early age, all I talked about
was becoming a doctor.” Never wavering from her goal, she remained in India,
where she completed her formal education and embarked on her medical
training.
Priya attended Catholic public school in the Bombay suburb where she and her
family lived. Her school and community, like the rest of India, were
characterized by a wide range of cultures and religions, such as Hinduism,
Islam, Catholicism, and Buddhism. “Diversity is something I became
accustomed to growing up,” she explains. “India is a country made up of many
states with different cultures, languages, foods, and religious beliefs. It
is very complex.” Even within Hinduism, the predominant religion in India,
there are many sects that worship different deities.
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In spite of the problems inherent in such a varied
society, cultural diversity offers the advantage of a broader view of the
world. Dr. Deshpande believes that growing up and working in India taught
her to listen to and appreciate people with life experiences different than
her own and to recognize the common threads shared by the world’s religions,
cultures, and humanity itself. “What I have learned is that basically people
are the same everywhere,” she says. “Human nature crosses all barriers.”
Another aspect of having grown up in India that Dr. Deshpande values is the
medical education and residency training she received. She attended GS
Medical College in Bombay, and after graduation, completed a residency
training program in obstetrics and gynecology. “The training I received
there is quite dissimilar from medical education in the United States,” she
explains. Because there is no health insurance, there is much more emphasis
on treatment based on clinical judgment rather than diagnostic testing.
Physicians are trained to be very selective of diagnostic testing and use of
the sophisticated equipment that is available.
The greatest benefit of her medical training in India was her profoundly
demanding clinical experience. During her residency at King Edward Memorial
Hospital, a very old British hospital affiliated with the medical college,
it was not uncommon for her to deliver 35-40 babies a day. The intensity of
this training period made the transition to private practice in America very
easy. “I believe the demands of my clinical experience in India have been a
big advantage to me as a physician,” she says.
While attending medical school, Priya met a fellow student, Sharad Ghamande,
who would eventually become her husband. They married after their residency
training in Bombay, about 6 months before moving to the United States in
1991. They chose to make America their home to broaden their personal and
professional experience. “We both enjoy travel and other cultures,” she
explains, “and we were interested in how medicine is taught and practiced
here.” Another factor influencing their move was that Priya’s older brother,
Harsha, had relocated to the United States many years earlier. He is a media
consultant in California, and while they do not see each other often, they
keep close contact.
Priya and Sharad first settled in Massachusetts near Boston, where they
spent a year taking board examinations required of foreign medical school
graduates before entering an American residency program. When they
successfully completed the series of exams, Dr. Deshpande began a family
practice residency at the University of Massachusetts while her husband
started an obstetrics and gynecology residency at Boston University.
While at UM, she had the privilege of serving as medical director of a
Southeast Asian health project, an outreach program designed to familiarize
immigrants with the American health care system. She found the experience
rewarding not only because it allowed her to help people who needed her, but
also because it gave her an opportunity to work with and learn about people
of other Eastern cultures.
For her American medical training, Dr. Deshpande chose family medicine
rather than obstetrics and gynecology because she it allowed her to treat a
broader range of people while continuing to utilize her skills in ob/gyn.
After completing the family practice residency program at UM, she served on
the medical university faculty as an assistant professor, researcher and
clinician for 2 years. In 1997, the couple moved to Buffalo, NY, where Dr.
Deshpande had a private practice in family medicine and her husband, Dr.
Ghamande completed a fellowship in gynecologic oncology. While in Buffalo,
the couple became a family, welcoming into their lives a son named Salil,
now 3 ½ years old.
When her husband finished his training, they decided to move to the South,
as it was similar in terms of weather to where they had grown up. Her
husband accepted a position at the Medical College of Georgia. Because of
her love of diversity, she specifically looked for a practice that was less
rather than more homogenous and found just what she wanted in the Center for
Primary Care. “I wanted to be in a family practice group, and I liked the
individuality I saw among the CPC physicians,” she says. “I liked their
personalities, felt we had common goals, and found them to be a well-rounded
group.” Last fall, Dr. Deshpande became the fourth physician on staff at CPC
Central.
Since settling in Augusta, Dr. Deshpande and her husband have spent much of
their time becoming acquainted with the community and building their medical
practices, but whenever possible, they travel and explore our own area’s
diversity. “We both love traveling,” she says, naming Europe, India, the
Caribbean and other areas of the United States as favorite destinations, and
“we relish all types of food,” especially Thai , Indonesian and Ethiopian
cuisine. At home, Dr. Deshpande likes to cook and enjoys decorating their
home with items they have acquired during their travels. “I like surrounding
myself with things with meaning and memories,” she says. Interior design is
an outlet for her creative side and a personal interest she would like to
develop in the future.
Professionally, Dr. Deshpande wants to continue with her earliest goals of
being a help to the people she cares for. “I want to make people feel better
and to guide them through the process of dealing with complicated health
problems,” she says. “I want to be someone they can talk to about their
health or anything else.”
In pursuing this goal, Dr. Deshpande consciously strives to keep a healthy
perspective on life’s events. “I try to stay focused on the big picture both
at work and in my family life,” she explains. “It is easy to get caught up
in little problems and the constant demands in life, but I try to step back
and ask myself, ‘What’s more important here?’ This philosophy allows her to
focus on the important aspects of her work, her personal life, and her
purpose in the world, and as a CPC physician, to bring both a balanced
perspective and another interesting dimension to the Center for Primary
Care.
