[Physician responsibility of confidentiality]

Summarizingly it is to be mentioned that, concerning the professional secrecy, the principle is held that the physician is allowed to speak as much as it is necessary and he must be silent as far as it is possible. The physician is entitled to reveal but not obliged to do so as far as he has been exonerated from the professional secrecy or as far as the revelation is necessary for the protection of a higher legal proceeding. This is taken into consideration also for evidence in judicial proceedings. Apart from legal informational obligations at first, however, not the physician but the patient defines the breadth of allowable infringements. Only when the professional secrecy collides with the legal matters of third persons the physician himself gets into compulsions of decision. Taking into consideration the criminal law the maintenance as well as the infringement of the professional secrecy remain without consequences for the physician, if the translegal critical state is present. In such cases, however, he should endeavour to keep the dangers which brings his silence for others as insignificant as possible.