The right of psychiatric patients to access to their records: Dutch developments.

It is usual for therapists in health care to keep records on the patients they treat, in which they collect the medical data concerning those patients. There is much debate on whether the patient has any right to access to those records. A summary is given of recent developments in the Netherlands with regard to such a right, especially in the field of psychiatry. The current result of these developments has been to afford patients in psychiatric hospitals a far-reaching right of direct access to their hospital records.