Free Patch Adams- Summary Essay Example

Patch Adams is a film that was based on a true story, and it opens on Hunter Adams, the lead character who because of suicidal tendencies checks himself into a mental institution. That point onward, Adams begins a long journey of realization and self-discovery. The first note that he makes is that it is not as much the doctors and medications rather the fellow hospital mates who are helping him with his depression. It is amidst all of these patients that he is given the title of ‘Patch’. During his time in the hospital, Hunter Adams learns from a patient that he is after all loved and far from a lonely person and it is the same patient who gives him this name. With that realization grows in him the desire to help people and so upon leaving the asylum, Adams gets enrolled in a medical school so that he could help people by being a doctor to them.
Hunter Adams is however taken aback by the new ways of medicine that demand that there be the distance between the doctor and the patient and an impersonal relationship. This is not what in his opinions qualifies as helping these poor souls and so, he brings his own theories into practice. According to his philosophy, the patients can become better more rapidly if they are made happy and if they can forget their worries even if for a short while. And so he maintains a habit of visiting the hospital with a red rubber nose on his face and touches the hearts of old and young patients. During his time in the medical school, Adams and a few of his friends start a free clinic under the name of Gesundheit, where they treat their patients are not using the traditional medicinal techniques but the powers of love and humor. He suffers a loss of his lover Carin and falls back into the depression and the wish to commit suicide.
While the patients enjoy Adams’s style of treatment, Dean Walcott does not. And so for coming in contact with the patients before his third year of medicine, the Dean tries to expel him. The strategy however downsides because of Adams’s impressive medical results and so he stays on. He then faces a trial that is brought against him for practicing medicine without a license at his free clinic. His patients stand by his side with red rubber noses on their faces, and he fights for his cause; to convince others of his innovative approach to practicing medicine and gains a great deal of support and commendation.
Despite the innovative and unique approach that Hunter Adams presented for practicing medicine, many regarded some of his ideas as unethical and unacceptable. Humor may be the technique for treating patients, but it is not always polite to joke about serious health issues like cancer and death. Another thing that many people may have looked at as disturbing would be the carelessness of attitude in Adams. He paid regular visits to the hospital to cheer up the sick, but he failed to consider the consequences of his acts. He had not asked for anyone’s permission for such visits and did not take into account what the result could be of becoming emotionally close to the patients. He also did not consider the consequences of opening a clinic without a license to practice. His choice may have been come from a good place in his heart, but he failed to realize that people could have died using his ideas of practicing medicine. The death of his love Carin was sound proof.