ALBURY surgeon Roland von Marburg has stopped practising, blaming a “sustained and orchestrated campaign” aimed at his reputation for the decision.
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The ear, nose and throat specialist retired his registration late last month after having consulted on the Border since 1999.
"It's with great sadness I'm retiring, my retirement though is largely the result of a fairly sustained and orchestrated campaign against my professional and personal reputation and also to a large extent against my family as well,” Dr von Marburg said.
He claimed fellow medicos had encouraged patients to take grievances to the Medical Council of NSW and the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission.
"I had a complaint made to the HCCC, which was dismissed, about an operation I didn't even perform,” Dr von Marburg said.
However, his retirement comes in the face of a hearing being listed for February in the NSW Civil Administrative Tribunal to hear complaints prosecuted by the HCCC.
Dr von Marburg said now that he had retired he would argue at a December hearing that the prosecution should not proceed.
Earlier this year the surgeon was suspended from working for nearly two months by the medical council on the basis of protecting the health and safety of the public.
Dr von Marburg successfully fought the ban but the experience spurred his move to retire.
"Although it was overturned and the basis for the suspension was found to be false it meant two months out of work, two months out of practice and people are obviously concerned about their continuity of care and referring doctors are concerned,” he said.
Dr von Marburg also had conditions on his registration since 2015 with a ban on performing some procedures and facing audits.
They followed him being found guilty of professional misconduct partly related to self-administering the drug pethidene.
"I have to accept a lot of responsibility for my opiate addiction, however it was largely exacerbated by many stressful situations and normally when we look at mental health issues, people try and deal with them as any other health issue would be dealt with, but in my case there seemed to be a lot of people who wanted to use it as a weapon,” Dr von Marburg said.
He said he took the drug as a crutch, akin to how others use alcohol.
