Discussion: How terminally ill patients should be helped
The final task of your exam question demands you to discuss how terminally ill patients should be helped. You are also asked to take your starting point in one of the three texts provided as material when answering the question.
Outlines
In what follows, we present some of the solutions of helping terminally ill patients depicted in each text.
Text 1 presents the case of Tony Nicklinson, a man suffering from locked-in syndrome, who is pro-assisted suicide. In the text, several ways of helping patients are suggested:
- The reference to religion and to the fact that only God can decide when a person lives or dies suggests that faith may offer some comfort.
- Using social networking in order to help the patient connect with people with the same interests.
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How terminally ill patients should be helped
As you have seen, one way of helping a terminally ill patient would be the recurrence to religion. Still, just like in Nicklinson’s case, some of the patients may be atheists and religion would prove to be useless in their case.
Using social networking to help a terminally ill patient can have both pros and cons. On the one hand, the patient can connect with those in a similar situation and look for comfort and understanding. On the other hand, social networks may prove to be rather superficial or depressing for the patient.
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