David R. Fleisher

2014

Biopsychosocial Concepts
for Clinical Practice

I began my fellowship in 1966 as a 31-year-old board-certified pediatrician eager to learn the subspecialty of pediatric gastroenterology. The model of clinical practice that I knew was the standard biomedical model, whose clear-cut goals were the diagnosis and cure of organic diseases. I was unaware of any other model and believed that psychological or social problems were separable parts of illnesses that could and should be handled only by mental health professionals. My job was to cure diseases.