How physicians approach patients and the problems they present is much
influenced by the conceptual models around which their knowledge is
organized. In this paper the implications of the biopsychosocial model for
the study and care of a patient with an acute myocardial infarction are
presented and contrasted with approaches used by adherents of the more
traditional biomedical model. A medical rather than psychiatric patient was
selected to emphasize the unity of medicine and to help define the place of
psychiatrists in the education of physicians of the future.
Abstract Teaser