In a 1977 article in Science,[2] psychiatrist George L. Engel called for "the need for a new medical model." Engel later[3] discussed a hypothetical patient, a 55-year-old man sustaining a second heart attack six months after his first. The patient's personality frames his own interpretation of his chest pain and explains his denial of it until his employer grants him permission to seek help. Although his heart attack can be attributed to an arterial blood clot, the wider personal perspective helps to understand that different outcomes may be possible depending on how the person responds to his condition. Subsequently, the patient in the emergency room develops a cardiac arrest as a result of an incompetent arterial puncture. We can analyse this event in wider terms than just a cardiac arrhythmia. It sees the event as due to inadequate training and supervision of junior staff in an emergency room. Thus while "no single definitive, irreducible model has been published," [4] Engel's example offers a starting point for broader understanding of clinical practice.