Student: Dedean Diana

University: U.M.F. “Iuliu Hatieganu” Cluj-Napoca

Faculty: Medicine
Speciality: General Medicine
Year: I
Group: 9

Patch Adams
My chosen quotation from the film: ‘We need to start treating the patient as well as the disease.’
(HPA)

This quotation represents today one of the biggest and most discussed problems of bioethics
because it is very hard to decide if it is right or wrong as the opinions are very diversified: there
are doctors who believe this is the way to actually cure a person from an illness correctly, while
others consider it is not a doctor’s business to take care of someone’s mental state. To be honest,
I strongly agree with Patch Adams’ words: a doctor’s responsability is to increase health and that
includes the mental one as well.
Firstly, they, as actual or future doctors, must not forget the fact that they are humans, just
like the people who need their help. Anatomy teaches them how the majority of traits are
common for everyone regarding the topography of our body parts and organs: for example, the
heart is always located between the lungs. Moreover, psychology shows them that there are
primary emotions which all the people feel in similar situations, like fear, happiness, sadness,
sympathy for a person who treats you well, hate for someone who acts coldly or insults you and
so on. That means they also can, by tragical circumstances, suffer from a disease which forces
them to seek medical help and become someone’s pacient themselves: nobody would feel good
or comfortable if the person who has the job to cure you thought of you only as a broken object
who needs a fix and not as a person who can actually think and feel emotions.
Secondly, a disease not only affects a person’s body, but it has a huge emotional impact on
one’s mind too. This is the main reason which drives the doctors who agree with the message
behind the quotation to keep following it: real doctors do not just save lives, they save a pacient’s
heart too, metaphorically speaking. Human beings are not robots, they have their own feelings
and thoughts, so it should be natural for a doctor to sympathize with the pacient’s delicate
condition: this allows them to interract easier and, at the same time, to make the ill person’s time
in hospital or clinic much more welcoming. In the majority of clinical cases, the people who made
a full recovery and who, simultaneously, maintained a good relationship – one which was not
strictly professional - with their doctors, have declared that it was easier for them to get through
their days of hospitalization. Of course, doctors should not get involved too much in their
pacients’ emotional suffering because, at some point, there will be serious consequences
regarding their own mental health and they will also be in conflict with the principles of bioethics.
In conclusion, this quotation represents the key to a better treatment and a stronger
relationship between a doctor and a pacient. For a doctor is very important to treat a disease, it
is his primary job, however, the ill person is not a lifeless object, but a human being who suffers
mentally because of the damage to her body, this is why the mental condition should not be
ignored.