Patch Adams
Founder of the Gesundheit! Institute
Patch Adams, M.D., is a doctor with a difference. He is a healer, a clown, a social activist and entertainer who teaches and practices medicine with heart. Patch is the real person behind the movie, starring Robin Williams. Patch is a social revolutionary who has devoted his life to giving away health care.
"The real man that inspires us all"
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Graduating from medical school with a loving heart full of play, Patch Adams began the "Gesundheit!" Institute with a group of twenty friends, including three doctors who moved into a six-bedroom home in West Virginia and opened it as a free hospital. He believes that laughter, joy and creativity are integral parts of the healing process. Doctors and patients in his model relate to each other on the basis of mutual trust, and patients receive plenty of time from their doctors. Allopathic doctors and practitioners of alternative medicine work side by side in Patch's model. If you think that all sounds like a utopian impossibility, it isn't! Patch and his colleagues have practiced medicine at the Gesundheit Institute together in West Virginia that way for 43 years in what Patch refers to as their "pilot project".
WHAT he OFFERS YOU
A renowned speaker on wellness, laughter, and humour as well as on health care and health care systems, Patch approaches the issues of personal, community, and global health with zestful exuberance, believing that the most revolutionary act one can commit in our world is to be happy.