The biomedical model of medicine care is the medical model used in most Western healthcare settings, and is built from the perception that a state of health is defined purely in the absence of illness.[1]: 24, 26 The biomedical model contrasts with sociological theories of care.[1]: 1 [2]
Forms of the biomedical model have existed since before 400 BC, with Hippocrates advocating for physical etiologies of illness. Despite this, the model did not form the dominant view of health until the nineteenth century during the Scientific Revolution.[1]: 25
Criticism of the model generally surrounds its perception that health is independent of the social environment in which it occurs, and can be defined one way across all populations.[3] The model is also criticised for its view of the health system as socially and politically neutral, and not as a source of social and political power or as embedded into the structure of society.[4]
In their book Society, Culture and Health: an Introduction to Sociology for Nurses, health sociologists Dr. Karen Willis and Dr. Shandell Elmer outline eight 'features' of the biomedical model's approach to illness and health:[1]: 27–29