The World of Patch Adams and
Gesundheit!
Interview…
Patch Adams is who/what? The subject of a
hugely popular film. A film about a caring doctor who
uses humor in his practice. A physician who has piloted
and created a model for giving health care that is
healthful for patients, family, physicians and nurses,
and the community. “Got it, been there, feel
good,” some might be tempted to say. “So what
does Patch Adams have to do with the non-health care
world of work and me?” If Patch Adams was just the
movie character, the answer might be—not much.
Patch Adams is not the movie, however—not by a long
shot. Adams is someone who through his lifelong focus on
peace, justice, and care—an incessant searcher for
the why of people and systems—has found that the
“ills” in the health care system are a
reflection of the ills of the society. Patch Adams will
be speaking at the AQP’s Spring Conference in Las
Vegas, March 11-13.
So who is Patch
Adams? What is he about? He is a whole person, bent on
healing the whole society—the world—so that
one day we would live in a world “where no one
alive can remember what the word ‘war’
means.” His nudging, prodding, jibing, clowning,
and challenging on many different fronts, along with
building the model hospital, is about doing what it takes
to assure that “whatever would have to change in
the world to make that actually an easy thing and not
what would be called an idealistic thing.”
His
words, energy, analysis, and clown antics whether applied
to making health care healthy for physicians and nurses,
or delivering joy, care, and sustenance to children in
Russia, Cuba, Bosnia, or soon in Afghanistan, can,
perhaps, make it easier for us to see the ills and
possible cures of our own organizations and lives, as
well as the impact we have on society. The challenge of
his life to us is be aware, not close our eyes, and to
take action if for no other reason than to avoid
extinction of our “kind” within the next 50
years. And, as one of his favorite funny persons, Groucho
Marx, might say: Don’t forget to laugh and have
fun; life is too serious not to have fun with it.
Note: As the time was short for this interview,
we’ve also scanned and will include comments from
other interviews and writings of Dr. Adams to give you a
better view of his life, work, and challenge to each of
us.
NFC: How would you describe what you are
about for the person who has not read your book or seen
the film?
Patch: If I had to use three words as opposed to
a book, I would say “peace, justice, and
care.” A world where no one alive can remember what
the word “war” means, and whatever would have
to change in the world to make that actually an easy
thing and not what would be called an idealistic
thing.
NFC: What is a first step someone might
take to making war an unfamiliar word?
Patch: Well, one can certainly be peace and
justice and care themselves. Which maybe is
everyone’s first or one step. A lot of people
don’t actually take that step and they still do
great things. But one can be full of peace and justice
and care about themselves. I certainly have lived that
for almost four decades.
NFC: What describes who Patch Adams is and
what drives you?
Patch: It’s not a philosophical
tackling, my life. It’s a doing. I’m about
doing. I’m a raging doer. I think inherent in the
doing is the energy for the doing. At least that’s
been so far my life.
My life is one of social action. I want to be useful. I
thought creating this [health care] model was a way that
I could sustain myself and it would be thrilling to do. I
wanted a lifetime kind of project that was my style. I
needed a place to practice where it would be thrilling to
be next to human suffering every day, all day long.
Because if is not thrilling, it will eat me up (3).
The most essential question I asked myself in my whole
life was, “Can I look at injustice and do nothing,
or can I do something?” With that Gesundheit! was
born, and whether it’s clowning in Russia or Bosnia
or Cuba, it comes out of a concern that in the luxury of
all of our lives—and in this country even the poor
are living luxuriously compared to the rest of the
world—we all still have to take the time to do the
right thing. For the last 16 years, the patient that
I’ve been involved with and making a house call on
is the community and society (4).
It’s the job of the clown and the doctor to walk
toward suffering and not be afraid to speak up.
That’s why I opened with peace and justice and
care. None of it’s worth anything. That’s why
20th century literature is about loneliness and
meaninglessness. Because as soon as you stop being part
of peace and justice and care, you’re going to be
lonely and your life isn’t going to have
meaning.
I answer all my mail. That’s about 600 longhand
letters a month. I regularly correspond with about 1600
people. Huge numbers, as the only model in the U.S. you
can imagine that I get thousands of letters from doctors
and nurses saying such things as: “I saw you speak
10 years ago and I’ve been a free doctor two days a
week ever since.” Imagine the repercussions of
that. There are thousands of them.
“Just recently, an Italian film company raised more
than $100,000 so that I could take 22 clowns from all
continents to Afghanistan. They originally just said I
would get clowns from here, but I said no let’s get
them from every continent. Then the question is how many
tons of aid can we bring. I told them I can’t clown
unless we’re feeding people if they’re
hungry.”
NFC: I would have thought that the film
would have made building the hospital easier and that
news of your going to Russia, Bosnia, or Afghanistan
would be a part of the news of the day. Has the media
been a help or a hindrance?
Patch: We put up fake, meaningless heroes
to completely divert intelligence from our population. So
our kind of work if anything is denigrated...After the
movie there wasn’t a single positive article about
me or our work. There were dumb, stupid, meaningless
things... made my children cry. They actually thought
what they were reading about, they didn’t know the
person they were reading about.
I knew the movie would do this. I would become a funny
doctor. Imagine how shallow that is relative to who I am.
I just got back from taking 17 clowns to Cuba where they
were hit by the worst hurricane in their history. The
month before that, 30 clowns, ages 16-65, from seven
countries went to Russia for the 17th year in a row. I am
goofy. During those times I clown 10-16 hours a day
uninterrupted. Blissfully. But it’s not the thing
to say in an interview. The important thing in an
interview is I’m speaking as a physician saying our
species is going to be extinct if we don’t convert
from a society that puts the emphasis on compassion and
generosity that we now put on money and power.
We’re active in over 40 countries. There’s
nothing in the media. Read Robert McChesney’s
“Rich Media, Poor Democracy” and you’ll
be in the streets as a revolutionary.
I’m on the road 300 days a year. As many as 11
lectures in a day, I’m voracious in
trying—universities, medical schools, commencement
addresses. I give sometimes two- or three-hour question
and answer periods. When it’s in the newspaper
it’s “Oh, Patch Adams, the real Patch Adams,
played by Robin Williams in the movie.”
I keep a list of 50 books in my wallet as my card, so
that when someone comes up and asks me for an autograph I
say, autograph, and I give them a little lecture on pop
culture and how it’s “dummified” our
population and its consequences. So I’ve never
given an autograph. I give them that little lecture and
then out of my wallet I take my card which has 10
questions to ask yourself, 10 ideas to think about, 10
things to do to change the world, 10 Web sites to visit,
magazines to subscribe to, and 10 books to read to
introduce yourself as a political activist.
We define success in terms of Michael Jordan, Bill Gates,
Cindy Crawford, and Julia Roberts. And they’re not
success. Success is schoolteachers trying to teach math
and English in a society that’s more interested in
spouting clichés… 54 million people are
watching a fake survivor show without the intelligence
that their own survival is at stake.
You now know that in talking with me what I am about is
ending the love of money and power. I want the number one
show in the country if anyone’s slow enough to
watch TV then to be, “Who Wants to be a Good
Friend?”
The road to the “public” Patch Adams
(1). (The Gesundheit Institute started in 1971 with a
12-year pilot project using a communal home.)
Patch: “We wanted to build a hospital
model addressing the problems of health care delivery. We
thought we’d get funded because here we were, a
bunch of doctors ready to work for free, and we just
needed a building, and we could collect huge numbers of
people to help. For 12 years we did the experiment and
saw 15,000 people. We paid for it. We worked outside
jobs...not a single donation. Fourteen hundred foundation
rejections.
“I learned, I think, how to do it, and that it was
right to be free and intimate, and without malpractice
insurance, without third-party reimbursement, and using a
mix of all the healing arts. All those things proved to
be correct. So, we realized since we got no donation,
that we were going to have to go public and play the fame
and fortune game, until we bumped into money… the
last 15 years has been Gesundheit connecting up with the
world. So I’ve spoken at most of the medical
schools in this country—many of them many times.
I’ve spoken at most all of the chiropractic
schools, and naturopathic schools, acupuncture schools,
osteopathic schools. They know me; we’re
friends.”
Since the film, going global—“People
are interested in hearing something about celebration of
life, the joy of service. Gesundheit is also connected to
environmental groups all over the world, just huge
numbers of projects. And volunteers come from all over
the world to our place in West Virginia to be in an
idealistic setting. In essence, we’re a little
university of idealism. A lot of people just use us to
keep dreaming, because they know we’re flaming
idealists out here, still trying. And there aren’t
many forces out there doing that.
“The fact is, I can’t believe my life. I get
to go as a clown to Bosnia, where it’s my job to
clown 16 hours a day, go cheer up troubled people.
That’s my job! Now, that’s not what I set out
to do, in 1971. I set out to build a hospital, and
that’s the most important project. These other
things are just peanuts.”
Sources:
- http://members.aol.com/douglaseby/padams.html
by Douglas Eby.
- http://dharma–haven.org/five–havens/patch–adams.htm
.
- http://iaig.ca/patchadamsbc/documents/interviewpa.html
. Interview with Patch Adams by Caring People
magazine, Spring 1993.
- http://www.empireone.net/~freeschool/patch.html
. Interviewed by Ellen and Larry Becker.
Learn more? www.patchadams.org
February 2002 News for
a Change Homepage
