Ways of seeing: Biomedical perspectives on the social world

In the UK health arena it has become axiomatic that, despite medicine's great achievements in the past, a biomedical perspective is no longer adequate on its own. Multidisciplinarity is increasingly regarded as a prerequisite for effective health-care education, practice, policy and research, and a plethora of initiatives exists in all these areas: common learning programmes for health professionals; flexible roles in patient-centred teams; patient participation in NHS decision-making and an increasing emphasis on interdisciplinary research.