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National Patient Rights Legislation| BELGIUM
| GENERAL OVERVIEW | BIOMEDICINE CONVENTION | EU MEMBER STATES | TYPES OF PATIENT RIGHTS LEGISLATION |
The Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine |
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General National Patient Rights Protection |
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| The rights and duties of physicians and patients are regulated in the law on the rights of patients of 22 August 2002. Patient means ‘the natural person to whom health care services are provided, whether at his request or not’ (Art. 2, 1°). This means that a patient is also someone who undergoes an examination of his state of health at the request of a third party, for example an employer or insurer. Health care means ‘the services that a health professional provides in order to promote, determine, preserve, restore or improve a patient’s state of health or in order to support a dying patient’ (Art. 2, 2°). This is a customary definition of health care. Removing an organ from a donor, terminating a pregnancy and performing euthanasia are therefore activities which do not constitute health care in the sense intended by the law on patient rights. They are regulated by other acts. Moreover, medical experiments involving persons are not covered by the law’s domain of application. For the purposes of the patient rights law, health professional means the practitioner provided for in Royal Decree No. 78 of 10 November 1967 on the practice of the health professions (Art. 2, 3°). As far as the current state of the legislation is concerned, this means the following professional groups: physicians, dentists, midwives, pharmacists, physiotherapists, nurses, paramedics and nurse’s assistants. Practitioners of non-conventional medicine, as defined in the Act of 29 April 1999 concerning such practices, are also health professionals. |