John Yowan Hour
1
Ms. Keeley Type
3
Freshman English
20 December 2002
The
movie Patch Adams is about the true story of Hunter Patch Adams, a
former mental health patient who decided to become a doctor and made a new
approach to medicine that was different than normal, but was successful and
loved by patients. Patch Adams approach to medicine is to approach his patients
as people, and talk to them with humor and kindness. To this day the
Patch Adams Gesundheit! Institute provides free medical care to people in West
Virginia.
The
movie starts out with Patch when he is a patient in a mental hospital, where he
learns that his mental health is improved more by helping other patients than
by treatment from the doctors. After that Patch ends up going to medical
school, where he ends up being at the top of his classes while spending most of
his time at the hospital making the patients laugh. Patch learns the hard way
that good intentions and trust are not always returned. The dean, his snobbish
roommate, and one self-hating and mean terminal patient, are against him. Then
Patch is challenged by the death of a friend at the hands of someone whom Patch
was treating at his unauthorized clinic. During this time Patch again suffers
with depression and a crisis that makes him wonder whether what he is doing is
worthwhile. Patch gets through this, with the help of his friends, his
classmates who, influenced by his approach to life and medical practice, both
support and challenge Patch to practice some of his own medicine.
My
reaction to the movie Patch Adams is that I thought it was neat how
Patch bonded with the patients and made them happy. I realize that the movie
was based on a true story and I learned that it was hard to go to medical school.
In the movie Patch had new ideas on how to treat patients. One of his ideas was
to treat patients like friends. Patch said "that he improved the patients
quality of life by not only delaying death but also by making them happy".
I feel that Patch was correct when he said that making the patient happy
improved their health. If I were sick and needed a doctor Patch is just the
kind of doctor that I would like to have.
The
setting tool place in a medical school in West Virginia, and a mental institution.
The medical school was very large with what seemed like a lot of students.
Patch had a dorm room at the school that he shared with a roommate. The mental
institution was where Patch was a patient when he was depressed and was
thinking about killing himself. Patch decided to become a doctor while he was a
patient at the mental institution. He was helpful to the other patients and his
roommate during the time he was there.
The ending of the movie was believable because Patch graduated from medical school and became a doctor. Patch also opened his own clinic called the Gesundheit Institute in West Virginia. I also thought the ending was kind of sad because Carin; the girl that Patch was in love with was murdered.