Chronic Pain Patients and the Biomedical Model of Pain

Treating or alleviating pain is a primary role of medicine. What actually constitutes pain is subjective, value-laden, and difficult to define objectively and empirically, relying as the definition does on bodily signs and language, both of which are culturally embedded and subject to multiple interpretations. Biomedical theories of pain concentrate upon its neurophysiological aspects in both diagnosis and treatment. Hence, scientific medicine reduces the experience of pain to an elaborate broadcasting system of nerve signals, rather than seeing it as molded and shaped by the person who is experiencing it and his or her particular sociocultural context. The biomedical concept of pain is unsophisticated and oversimplified, often resulting in physicians' doubting the veracity of patients' reports of pain and the marginalization of such patients. We must incorporate engagement with the social and emotional context into medical understanding and treatments of pain to fully encompass its complex nature.