By: John O’Brien-Bell, MB
Dr Peter Doris, 1944–2018
Issue: BCMJ,
vol. 61, No. 2, March 2019,
Page 83 Obituaries
Dr Peter Doris grew up in Ontario. He was a medical student at Queen’s University at Kingston and later a general surgeon at affiliated hospitals. Mid-career he moved to Surrey, BC, where he was quickly recognized as an outstanding surgeon, especially for abdominal pathology. On appointment as chief of the Department of Surgery at Surrey Memorial Hospital, he addressed the management of surgical services in the emergency room and moved to 24-hour surgical care. As surgical chief he found himself on numerous committees, where he was a popular advocate. On executive committees he found himself increasingly involved with Surrey Memorial Hospital’s role in the rapid expansion of Surrey’s community and its multicultural development. Dr Doris’s dream was that Surrey Memorial would be the link, as a teaching hospital, between the University of British Columbia and the Surrey campus of Simon Fraser University. He had the support of the medical staff but not of the administration, which over subsequent years removed physicians from roles in the hospital’s development.
Despite having a busy surgical practice, his door was always open to colleagues seeking advice on patients or hospital issues, and he continued to press for physician involvement in the hospital’s development. He spoke about the role of the physician in the hospital system at the 2016 College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC annual general meeting, and his presentation was so popular that it was repeated twice during the day.
Struck by sudden illness, Dr Doris lingered in hospital care, and it is saddening that in his final months he didn’t have the attention he needed and deserved.
—John O’Brien-Bell, MB
Surrey
Attention: John O'Brien-Bell
Thank you for the article on our brother. It was very kind of you to do so. Although I am the youngest, my mother said Peter always wanted to be a doctor at two years old. Peter graduated at the top of his high school class taking 13 subjects, when only 8 periods were available for instruction. The other subjects he did on his own. In medical school, he graduated the first in this class for 6 years. After his fellowship in England, he returned to Queens and was regarded by one of his students, who received an award from the American College of Surgeons for her work, she regarded Peter and his colleagues as giants in their fields. I am sure if his health was fine, he would still be practising surgery or somewhere else in the medical field even if H became a factor, which by the way, he was born in 1944. Thanks again.
Mel Doris and Lynne Roy