Confessions to doctors
28. Confessions to doctors
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(2) No physician or surgeon shall without the consent of his patient divulge
in any civil suit action or proceeding or an investigation by a Complaints
Investigator under the Accident Compensation Act 1985 any information which he
has acquired in attending the patient and which was necessary to enable him to
prescribe or act for the patient.
(3) Where a patient has died, no physician or surgeon shall without the
consent of the legal personal representative or spouse of the deceased patient
or a child of the deceased patient divulge in any civil suit action or
proceeding any information which the physician or surgeon has acquired in
attending the patient and which was necessary to enable the physician or
surgeon to prescribe or act for the patient.
(4) Subsection (3) shall cease to have any application to or in relation to
any civil suit action or proceeding at and from the time at which there is no
legal personal representative spouse or child of the deceased patient.
(5) Subsections (2) and (3) do not apply to or in relation to-
(a) an action brought under Part III of the Wrongs Act 1958 to recover
damages for the death of the patient;
(b) proceedings brought under the Workers Compensation Act 1958 or the
Accident Compensation Act 1985 to recover compensation for the death
of the patient; or
(c) any civil suit action or proceeding in which the sanity or
testamentary capacity of the patient is the matter in dispute.
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Victorian Consolidated Legislation