Our distinguished members Yvo Vermylen en Carlos Contreras have enriched the dental law literature with a bulky book entitled “Tandarts en Recht", Dutch for “Dentist and the law”.

As this book is on the crossroads of two disciplines, dentistry and the law, one can expect a wide variety of topics. It appears that the editors tried to cover both disciplines comprehensively.   

The result of this approach is a book in which an array of Flemish experts discuss fairly every law related topic a Belgian dentist might encounter as well as every dental topic a Belgian lawyer might be interested in. These topics range from the durability of adhesive bridges to fiscal advise and from the course of a Belgian penal process to the results of  traumata to the milk dentition. One of the most interesting topics is the contribution about the relatively new Belgian patient law. The discussion about this law, written by Yvo Vermylen is highly interesting.  It shows a certain similarity between health laws all over the world. Even the ombudsman who is introduced in this law has his counterpart in other countries. An ombudsman seems to be an excellent alternative for the civil procedure, provided the ombudsman can grant damages to a certain amount.  In addition to regulating the ombudsman, the Belgian patient law gives rules concerning the right to quality and rules concerning record keeping, privacy, topics that are dealt with in health laws all over the world. A somewhat exotic article is the right to freedom of choice of a specific health provider. This rights seems to be a luxury as a right to free choice is only effective when there are enough alternatives to chose from. In many countries, the right to freely choose one's dentistis limited for large parts of the population. Examples in case are NHS patients in the UK or Medicaid patients in the US.   

The vast area that is covered in this book and the quality of the authors makes it an ideal reference book for dentists, patients and certainly for lawyers. As a bonus the book offers a very understandable explanation of dental concepts for lay people.  Dental professionals will find the full text of several Belgian laws reprinted. This book is not limited to the discussion of heath law. The thoroughness and the extensiveness is a choice of the editors based on their goals for this book. As said earlier this book is an ideal reference book. If a dentist or a lawyer encounters a problem concerning law it is highly probable he can find the solution in this book. This approach has however, some (minor) disadvantages as well. At least in The Netherlands, but perhaps in other countries as well, dentists and dental students prefer easy reading, also in the area of law, preferably with a lot of cases. This book gives a lot of information, so students who have this book on their list will learn quite a lot, but it will be a challenge for the professor to juice it up with cases.          

Another risk of the "reference book approach" is the target audience. It is very difficult to serve two masters.  Consequently, lawyers may complain that too much of the legal material has been simplified. In contrast, some dentists may feel they are presented with too much simplistic dental information and too much legal information they will seldom need.  

Despite these minor remarks this book is a must for everyone who is interested in Belgian (dental) law.

Wolter Brands
Department of Preventive and Restorative Dentistry
Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center
Box 9101, 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands
w.brands@dent.umcn.nl