Biomedical Approach
Introduction
Since the time of Enlightenment, Western ideas of health have been dominated by the biomedical approach. The basis on which these opinions are founded is that an individual is not responsible for their illness and that the mind and body work separately from each other. Health, in the eyes of this approach can be deemed as simply the absence of disease. Part of the reason this vision of health has dominated so much, is that it’s practiced by the majority of the health professionals and is the staple of the care received in hospitals.
The aim of this assignment is to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of this system, and to suggest the advantages that using a social model to view health could bring.
Discussion
Health, is a word that carries a broad spectrum of meanings, it is defined differently in all walks of life. Biomedical health although being the most recognised is not the only approach and has been called by Naidoo and Wills (200, p.9) “a narrow view of health”. The social Model contrasts this approach. It focuses on the social and economic factors regarding health and looks at ways to prevent illness before it occurs. Even in the most affluent countries, people who are less well off have substantially shorter life expectancies (Marmot and Wilkinson, 2003), a social view on health would take this information into account, placing emphasis on improving the quality of life to increase life expectancy. Contrastingly the Biomedical method would look at a patient and prescribe necessary medication, although usually being effective in the short term, this would do nothing to stop the person getting ill again as they would return to the same unhealthy lifestyle or environment. This could be seen as impersonal, but this scientific approach can be useful in many scenarios as it has been said by Pearson, Vaughan and FitzGerald(2005, p54) that “the overriding concern for the patient is for cure and control of his or her disease, and this
Since the time of Enlightenment, Western ideas of health have been dominated by the biomedical approach. The basis on which these opinions are founded is that an individual is not responsible for their illness and that the mind and body work separately from each other. Health, in the eyes of this approach can be deemed as simply the absence of disease. Part of the reason this vision of health has dominated so much, is that it’s practiced by the majority of the health professionals and is the staple of the care received in hospitals.
The aim of this assignment is to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of this system, and to suggest the advantages that using a social model to view health could bring.
Discussion
Health, is a word that carries a broad spectrum of meanings, it is defined differently in all walks of life. Biomedical health although being the most recognised is not the only approach and has been called by Naidoo and Wills (200, p.9) “a narrow view of health”. The social Model contrasts this approach. It focuses on the social and economic factors regarding health and looks at ways to prevent illness before it occurs. Even in the most affluent countries, people who are less well off have substantially shorter life expectancies (Marmot and Wilkinson, 2003), a social view on health would take this information into account, placing emphasis on improving the quality of life to increase life expectancy. Contrastingly the Biomedical method would look at a patient and prescribe necessary medication, although usually being effective in the short term, this would do nothing to stop the person getting ill again as they would return to the same unhealthy lifestyle or environment. This could be seen as impersonal, but this scientific approach can be useful in many scenarios as it has been said by Pearson, Vaughan and FitzGerald(2005, p54) that “the overriding concern for the patient is for cure and control of his or her disease, and this
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