article_snippet: With respect to medical data, the criminal code can ultimately leave doctors between a rock and a hard place.
article_snippet: For it only allows doctors breach confidentiality when doctors have reason to believe that sharing doctors knowledge could prevent 'a particularly serious crime' or a threat to someone's life.
article_snippet: doctors can face a year in prison if doctors wrongly breach privacy, but up to five years in jail for withholding 'credible information about the planning or commission' of serious acts like murder.
article_snippet: Despite the variation in sentences, doctors have tended to favour the individual's privacy.
article_snippet: The German Medical Board has clear ethical policies on doctor-patient relations: 'Doctors must remain silent about what is told to Doctors in confidence or what Doctors learn in Doctors capacity as doctors.'
article_snippet: It applies even after the death of a patient and includes keeping medical facts secret even from family members of the person in treatment, under penalty of up to one year in prison or a fine.
article_snippet: Ms Tiirik also called for laws to be relaxed to allow doctors greater freedoms to flag up patients with mental health problems if doctors are responsible for the live of others.
article_snippet: One exception, however, is when medical professionals have been excused from this duty by the patient, or when medical professionals have reason to believe that sharing medical professionals knowledge could prevent 'a particularly serious crime' or a threat to someone's life.
article_snippet: A doctor is also obliged to come forward in cases of 'psychiatric illnesses or a possible threat of suicide', member of parliament Karl Lauterbach, himself a physician, told the daily Bild.
article_snippet: Police also have the right... to a frank talk with a doctor without worrying that Police employer will be told.'