The Biomedical Model Of Illness

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For over 100 years the biomedical model has dominated Western medicine. Its impact has been broad and profound, increasing life expectancy and emphasizing biologic approaches to health care and health research. The biomedical model of illness that excludes psychological and social factors and includes only biologic factors in an attempt to understand a person’s medical illness or disorder; putting an exclusive focus on disease. This model is now found to be inadequate because it “leaves no room within this framework for the social, psychological and behavioral dimensions of illness. The biomedical model is only a small component in this larger framework. Within this model, a great focus in put on medication and it

Compliance, Concordance or …show more content…

It may also *** in taking the medication at the wrong time, taking an incorrect dose, non-participation in treatment programmes, delay in seeking care, or stopping a treatment too soon. And it should be noted that this nonadherence can be intentional or unintentional. A great cause for this lies with communication and the lack of it. Data collected by Health and Hospitals Net (2008) showed that after being discharged from the emergency room of the hospital, 78% did not understand the medical instruction they had been given, of them 50% did not know they did not …show more content…

This can likely be attributed to the fact that chronically ill patients are required to take make significant changes to their life style by agreeing to follow long-term treatment regimen. Even within this group difference in adherence can be found, nonadherence among hypertension patients is estimated at 40%, whereas this number has been found to be between 55% and 70% for patients with arthritis. (Nichois-English, & Poirier, 2000)

Overall nonadherence has been estimated around 25%, but when regimens are very complex and/or require lifestyle changes, nonadherence can increase to about 70% (Martin et al., 2005). This suggest that the form of the treatment is can have an influence on adherence. Studies showed this by findings that patients following a thrice-daily medication regimen show an adherence rate of around 59%, a number that goes up to 84% in case of a once-daily regimen. In addition, adherence can drop as low as 20% when patients are required to take 13 or more pills per day. (Martin et al.,

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