THEORETICAL MEDICINE - A PROPOSAL FOR RECONCEPTUALIZING MEDICINE AS ASCIENCE OF ACTIONS

The main task of a critical theory of medicine should be to develop a perspectival, context-fair, and multidimensional science of actions wh ich integrates both diversity and heterogeneity within medicine withou t eliminating either one. Such a theory should employ diversity in the following areas: (1) in systems subsystems, and professions, because different medical professions embody different health-care subsystems, thereby influencing the way manpower is utilized (2) in actors, (e.g. , patients, health-care experts and society), processes, and situation s, because each actor potentially conceptualizes health, illness, and desired outcomes differently; and (3) in models of medicine (i.e., as an object science versus an action science). Situational influences mo dify concepts and explanatory models; even the particular terms, such as illness, disease, and sickness, are not necessarily concordant with each other.