Yes, though I doubt you will be getting a patch or really be all that likely to make one of your own just yet. There are a few threads discussing it for other games which will have some more info. Learning will take more time than actually fixing your DS as well.
Generally there are three approaches people take.
1) Simple control debounce tweaking/
2) Game modification
3) If the game has customisable controls (even premade selection) then that tends to involve a different method (or at least give you a slightly easier one than 1) and 2) above).
1) Owing to the way switches work game consoles will tend to copy the state of the keys once per frame (
http://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm#dskeypad ) to normal memory. If you can make a cheat or mod that takes this memory area and swaps it such that the game thinks the other button is pressed then you have your hack. Obviously every action in the game that uses it will change with this one.
2) You change what the game expects. Somewhere in the game will be the rough equivalent of "IF button R is pressed, do jump and slide action". You would change that to IF button L is pressed...
Harder but the only thing that changes is the action you do it for. For some this is good, for others this is bad if there are menus, game actions, minigames and more to handle.
3) If the game has customisable controls (obviously if you could do it in game you would have) then you have some other options. Typically games will either have a straight up customisable controller setup (maybe blocking certain buttons -- if you want to have accelerate as the start button then so be it) or premade selections of buttons which are what they are.
If it is a broke device I would fix it. I tend to suggest people do control mods if they have a need or a preference for a different setup.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110604163902/http://crackerscrap.com:80/docs/sfchacktut.html has a guide to doing it for touchscreen stuff for starfox but it is much the same for normal buttons.
