[Unclear roles of district medical examiner and the attending physician in cases of natural and unnatural deaths in the Netherlands].

The role of the attending physician and the district medical examiner in the case of a natural or unnatural death is subject to a number of legal regulations. The different parts of a postmortem examination, the conditions for the issue of a death certificate, the term 'attending physician', and the position and duties of the district medical examiner are not, however, unequivocally specified in Dutch law. This gives rise to frequent misunderstandings.