ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates on the subject with examples of probably the most important means of written communication within the doctorpatient relationship: the genre of a physician's letters, commonly better known as discharge summaries. The aim of the chapter is to approach some of the conflicts that can arise when physicians communicate via letter both with other physicians and with patients, in order to finally highlight the also ethically significant effects of the authorreader relationship on the doctorpatient relationship. Patients are oftentimes not necessarily seen as problematic after all, they are not the addressee or what we call the explicit or maybe even implied reader. Patients' access to their letters is not uniformly regulated in Germany. In theory, according to legislators, every patient has a right to inspect the files and, thus, also letters concerning his or her case.
