Occupational Medicine: Toward a Worker/Patient Empowerment Approach to Occupational Illness

Abstract

Clinicians practicing occupational medicine are increasingly confronted with patients who have complex illnesses with chronic nonspecific symptoms. Most clinicians use the traditional tools of biomedicine to diagnose and treat the illness, determine etiology, and assess disability. This article argues that the biomedical approach is inadequate to effectively evaluate and treat occupational illness. After reviewing several critiques of biomedicine, including biopsychosocial, feminist, class, and critical theory/postmodern perspectives, the author offers an alternative approach that builds on aspects of these perspectives as well as the “popular education” work of Paulo Freire. Constraints on, and possibilities for, the development of an alternative approach that attempts to build patients' capacities for transformative action are explored.