Departed doctor honoured

Three months after Dr. Suresh Katakkar left Prince George under the dark cloud of a provincial investigation, the oncologist was rewarded for his work by a patient group in the United States.

Katakkar has been named a compassionate doctor by Patients' Choice based on online votes by patients south of the border. The organization hands out awards to the top three per cent of doctors based on the votes of nearly 100 million patients on three websites.

Katakkar had been the chief oncologist at the soon-to-open B.C. Cancer Agency Centre for the North until an investigation was launched into his practices in May. He subsequently resigned his position in June.

Katakkar was beloved by many of his patients locally, who called the Citizen in the wake of his departure to tell stories of how he would go above and beyond the normal call of duty to make them feel comfortable.

Terry Fedorkiw, the wife of one of Katakkar's former patients, said the compassionate doctor award is appropriate. She said he not only fostered a culture of healing for her husband, Rob, but for her entire family.

"He treated the person as a whole, every aspect of the person, not just the cancer," she said. "He was a true artist of medicine. Medicine is an art based on science, and he was a real artist."

Fedorkiw said she was upset by the process the B.C. Cancer Agency used in informing patients of the investigation and said that contrasted with how Katakkar always kept patients in the loop with their diagnosis and treatments.

"He would give a little bit of hope, but he was always realistic -- it wasn't false hope," she said. "He told you exactly what was going on."

A spokeswoman for the B.C. Cancer Agency said it would be inappropriate for the organization to comment about the award during the ongoing investigation.

Katakkar is a repeat winner of the the Patients' Choice compassionate doctor award, having also been honoured in the same category in 2010.

"While many physicians receive positive feedback from patients, relatively few receive such high praise about the compassion that accompanies their care," Erika Boyer, vice-president of consumer research at Patients' Choice said. "We congratulate Dr. Katakkar on this achievement."

In a letter to some of his former patients after his resignation, Katakkar wrote that "as a physician my first obligation is to my patients and then to my employer" and went on to explain he believed he was morally required to provide his patients with what he perceived to be the best care, regardless of B.C. Cancer Agency protocols.

The agency contends some of Katakkar's treatments violated standard protocols for certain types of cancer and has insisted the safety of patients is of the utmost importance during the probe.

The investigation is ongoing and the agency is actively looking for someone to fill the now vacant position. Last week agency president and CEO Dr. Max Coppes said the biggest challenge in the Katakkar investigation is trying to figure out what information was not put on patient charts. Coppes expects more information will be released soon.