BIOMEDICAL MODEL

Biomedical Model

Biomedical Model

Introduction

The meaning of health has evolved based on the historical moment of culture, social system and level of knowledge. In the early years of history was maintained over a long time, primitive thought (magical-religious), centered on the belief that the disease was a divine punishment, this attitude is still maintained in some villages, in Africa, Asia, Australia and America.

There are two complementary models in medicine: biomedical and biopsychosocial model. The first stems from the medical application of the analytical method of the exact sciences, the second takes into account the interrelationships between biological, psychological and social disease. The clinical course of patients is determined not only by biological factors but also by collective forms of life and psychosocial events that are co-constitutive of the subject's life, as well as the structures and values that characterize the community. Attention to biopsychosocial dimension should be part of clinical reasoning and, more broadly, of thinking in medicine.

The Biomedical Model

The biomedical paradigm remains dominant in the teaching of medical schools. A doctor trained in this tradition seems to favor the rightful place in the strictly scientific approach, in their daily work. In fact, he finds fast in practice, that "the" science "and the scientific method are dealing with the understanding and treatment of disease, not with the patient and patient care.

The biomedical model stems from the medical application of the analytical method conventional reductionist science of nature. Belief presiding director in the development of this method - and its illusory promise - is the idea that we manage to solve the mystery of reality and to achieve a clear understanding, some distinct and progressive dissection of this reality by ever smaller components. The import of the analytical model of medicine is accompanied by an initial decision that we can illustrate very schematically as follows: being sick (having bad, feel bad, be disturbed ...) reduces to having a disease, a "disease entity" within the organization (Annandale 1998, 86). The medical approach should, therefore, follow the path of the man who "is wrong" and just ask for help from a doctor, to the facts and disease processes that it can identify in his physical body.

The biomedical model has, therefore, a basic problem that accounts for much of the uneasiness in the face of medicine by a number of patients, as the malaise that doctors may feel themselves in situations that face their traditional model of thinking and acting the part leaves the poor. "The error that makes this model a model crippled condenses Engel, is that it does not include the patient and his attributes as a person, as a human being (Annandale 1998, 86)."

Alternative Model: the Biopsychosocial Model

This model, known as the biomedical model excludes psychological and sociocultural factors that modulate our behavior and our lifestyles are. Against this traditional medical model has been proposed an alternative model that takes into account significant psychological factors, social and cultural with the biological and environmental development as determinants of disease in its acute manifestation, and ...