The biomedical model, attempting to explain health and disease in terms of the physical sciences, tends to eliminate or ignore other aspects of sickness phenomena. Medicine and medical education have sought to assert the importance of the patients subjectivity, including psychological makeup, social context, illness framework, beliefs, culture, and other forces. These offer an added dimension to the flat biomedical surface. The metaphor of flatness and dimensionality may help to conceptualize the role of patient experience in clinical care and in medical education.