One of Australia's leading trauma surgeons resigned Friday amid claims of incompetence and allegations that he billed the health service for operations that never took place, news reports said Friday. ( dpa )
German-born Professor Thomas Kossmann, 48, was suspended in November from his post of director of trauma surgery at the Alfred Hospital and Melbourne's Monash University.
His decision to step down as head of Australia's biggest trauma centre comes after he was criticized by an expert panel set up by the hospital to look at his clinical performance.
"The past six months, my family and I have been subjected to a process that can only be described as un-Australian," he told reporters. "The notion of the fair go has been thrown out the window with this investigation."
He said the expert panel had failed to turn up a single patient or relative of a patient to support the allegations.
Kossmann was associate professor of surgery at University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland before arriving in Australia with his wife in 2001.
Brain injury researcher Cristina Morganti-Kossmann, 46, is associate director of Alfred Hospital's National Trauma Research Institute. Her husband was the director.