Medical sociology is the sociological analysis of medical organizations and institutions; the production of knowledge and selection of methods, the actions and interactions of healthcare professionals, and the social or cultural (rather than clinical or bodily) effects of medical practice..
Medical sociology is concerned with the relationship between social factors and health, and with the application of sociological theory and research techniques to questions related to health and the health care system..
Socio-Cultural Construction of Medical Knowledge
The focal subject of biomedicine is the human body.
Biomedicine construes the body as a natural object and its pathologies as natural processes.
As such, biomedicine assumes its view of the body, its processes and pathologies, are universal..
Medical sociology, sometimes referred to as health sociology, is the study of the social causes and consequences of health and illness..
The four main areas of research in medical sociology are the social construction of health/illness, the social production of health/illness, the study of healthcare systems and facilities, and the postmodern perspective of health and illness..
The purpose of biomedicine is to improve human health.
That's it, plain and simple.
Biomedical scientists strive to understand how the body works, how diseases develop and spread, and how we can treat or prevent illness..
Medical Sociology Defined.
Medical sociology is simply the application of sociological perspectives and methods in the study of health issues in human societies with a skewed focus on the sociocultural milieu that accounts for human health and illness..
For more than a century, the biomedical model — derived from Louis Pasteur's germ theory of disease — has been the dominant force in Western medicine..
The sociology of health plays a vital role in analysing the social and cultural reasons for diseases and illnesses.
It provides information starting from the issues' onset, preventative measures, and managements.
Physicians focus more on the medical perspectives rather than on the social conditions of the diseases..
The ‘received view’ of these historical relations is that social and economic changes allowed the growth of biomedicine, which in turn created new institutions, professional health care practices, and technologies that, in turn, caused vast improvements in health outcomes for the populations served by biomedical institutions.
On the other hand, sociology of medicine is close to what could be described as sociology of health and illness.
It involves the study of social factors in disease aetiology, incidence, prevalence, distribution, social response to health and illness, therapeutic process, and community health needs .
Coupled with the accelerated pace of change, it is pressing that we build authentic collaborations across and between the biomedical sciences, humanities and social sciences, and wider society.
It is only in this way that we can ask and answer the penetrating questions that will shape improvements in human health now and in the decades ahead.
