Practice question · Multiple choice
Two patients tear the same knee ligament and have the same operation from the same surgeon. One is back at work in six weeks. The other is still disabled a year later, and no scan shows any difference between them. Why is this a problem for the biomedical model but not for the biopsychosocial one?
Hints
- The scans are identical, so whatever separates these two patients is not in the tissue.
- Ask which model has anywhere to put coping style, beliefs about pain, and circumstances.
Show the answer
A. Identical pathology does not settle the outcome.
Why
Same tissue, same repair, a year of difference, and the biomedical model has one place to look, so identical scans ought to mean an identical course. When they do not, it has run out of explanation. The other two domains are where the difference actually is: what the patient believes pain means, and whether they can afford to recover slowly.
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