SOCIAL SCIENCE Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

SOCIAL SCIENCE - Essay Example Traditionally, there were models like biomedical model, which did not consider the human side of a patient. Jewson (1976, p. 235) analysis that in the biomedical model the â€Å"patient† was â€Å"designated a passive and uncritical role in the consultative relationship and his main function† was to â€Å"endure and wait.† According to Doyal (1983, p.31) in the traditional models â€Å"the disease had become more important than the person who harboured it.† However, there has been a shift to models that consider other factors such as social, psychological and environmental in shaping the context of a disease and illness. An example is the bio-psychosocial which has sought to understand medical conditions through the analysis of a variety of factors. The model acknowledges that in a disease context, there are many factors such as behavior and attitude towards the illness, social as well as psychological factors (Engel, 2012). The narratives from the patient s are today extensively applied to explore the patient experiences with illness (Charon 2001; Kleinman 1988). In this case, the awareness of the binary relationship between disease and illness has revolutionarised the medical practice. This is the difference between the biomedical constructs of the pathophysiological processes and individual’s subjective experience of the patient explored in other models that consider disease as a result of myriad factors (Kleinman 1988). The exploration of patient narrative is relevant in the case of diabetes because patients and physicians have different perceptions, concerns and goals (Anderson 1986; Freeman & Loewe 2000). In this assignment, a patient’s story on her experience with diabetes will be explored with an aim to construct the cultural, social and psychological meaning and locate the facts in contemporary theoretical perspectives. The real names