Plot
In 1969, Hunter Adams (Robin Williams) is a troubled man who voluntarily commits himself into a mental institution. Once there, he finds that helping his fellow inmates gives him a purpose in life and earns the nickname "Patch". Because of this he aspires to become a medical doctor and two years later enrolls at Virginia Medical University, being the oldest first year student. He questions the school's approach to medical care, and clashes with the school's Dean Walcott (Bob Gunton), who believes that doctors must treat patients and not bond with them as people. Because of this and other incidents, including a prank during a medical conference, he is expelled from the school, although he is later reinstated due to his methods actually improving the health of patients. Adams encourages medical students to cultivate relationships with nurses and learn their interviewing skills early, and argues that death should be treated with dignity and even humor.
Adams begins a friendship with fellow student Carin Fisher (Monica Potter), and develops his idea for a medical clinic built around his philosophy of treating patients through humor and compassion. With the help of Arthur Mendelson (Harold Gould), a wealthy man who was a patient whom Patch met while in the mental hospital, he purchases 105 acres (425,000 m²) in West Virginia to construct the future Gesundheit! Institute. Together with Carin, medical student Truman Schiff (Daniel London), and some old friends, he renovates an old cottage. When they get the clinic running, they treat walk-in patients without medical insurance, and perform comedy sketches for them.
Carin and Patch's friendship soon turns into romance. She reveals to him that she had been molested as a child, distancing herself from men and dreaming of becoming a butterfly to escape her torment, but Patch reassures her that she can overcome her pain to help others. Encouraged, Carin wants to help a disturbed patient, Lawrence "Larry" Silver (Douglas Roberts), by visiting him at home. Larry turns out to be far more disturbed than anybody expected, and murders Carin, turning the shotgun on himself soon after. Patch is devastated and guilt-ridden by Carin's death. He reconsiders his outlook, and questions the goodness of humanity. He contemplates suicide and questions God for what happened. He then turns to see a butterfly which reminds him of Carin and hope, and so decides to continue his work in her honor. However he is dismissed from the school for a second time because he ran a clinic and practiced medicine without a license. He files a grievance with the state medical board at the advice of his former Med school roommate, Mitch Roman (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and must attend a hearing where it is decided whether he can graduate.
Patch is able to convince the board in a final speech that he did his best to help the people that came to him, and as a doctor it is his responsibility to treat the disease of the body as well as a person's spirit regardless of outcome. The jury accepts Patch's medical methods and decides to allow him to graduate. He receives a standing ovation from the packed hearing room. Even at graduation, Patch cannot help but be a non-conformist. After handing Adams a diploma, Walcott approves of Patch's conformity, to which Patch bows to the professors and the audience, revealing his nude bottom under his gown.
Read more about this topic: Patch Adams (film)
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“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
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