Academic Integrity and Professional Ethics Discussion Paper

Assignment: Academic Success and Professional Development Plan
Part 3: Strategies to Promote Academic Integrity and Professional Ethics
Nurse-scholars have a significant obligation to their community as well. Their work must have academic and professional integrity. Their efforts are designed to add to the body of knowledge, advance the profession, and ultimately help in the care of patients. Work that lacks integrity is subject to erode quickly or worse.
Fortunately, there are strategies and tools that can help ensure integrity in academic and professional work. This Assignment asks you to consider these tools and how you might apply them to your own work.
In this Assignment you will continue developing your Academic Success and Professional Development Plan by appending the original document you began in the previous assignment.
To Prepare:
Reflect on the strategies presented in the Resources for this Module in support of academic style, integrity, and scholarly ethics.
Reflect on the connection between academic and professional integrity.
The Assignment:
Part 3, Section 1: Writing Sample: The Connection Between Academic and Professional Integrity
Using the Academic and Professional Success Development Template you began in Module 1 and expanded in Module 2, write a 2- to 3-paragraph analysis that includes the following:
Explanation for the relationship between academic integrity and writing
Explanation for the relationship between professional practices and scholarly ethics
Cite at least two resources that support your arguments, being sure to use proper APA formatting.
Use Grammarly and Safe Assign to improve the product.
Explain how Grammarly, Safe Assign, and paraphrasing contributes to academic integrity.
Part 3, Section 2: Strategies for Maintaining Integrity of Work
Expand on your thoughts from Section 1 by:
identifying and describing strategies you intend to pursue to maintain integrity and ethics of your: (1) academic work as a student of the MSN program and (2) professional work as a nurse throughout your career. Include a review of resources and approaches you propose to use as a student and a professional.

Promoting Academic Integrity and Professional Ethics

Part 3, Section 1

Integrity is an important concept in any environment. This is particularly true for the nursing education environment where integrity is necessary to ensure competency. For nursing students, academic and professional integrity are important concepts. Academic integrity refers to the expectation to uphold the fundamental values of responsibility, fairness, respect, honesty and trust that guide students in their academic endeavors and activities. Academic Integrity and Professional Ethics Discussion Paper   Violating any of these fundamental values implies a violation of the academic integrity expectation. Some of the activities that violate these values include dishonesty, plagiarism, copying, cheating, fabricating/falsifying data and information, abuse of confidentiality, inappropriate conduct, and research misconduct (Hurd, 2019). Professional integrity refers to behaving in a manner that is consistent with the professional and ethical expectations of the work and practice environment. It articulates the expectation that an individual will act in a manner that is consistent with the profession’s code of conduct and code of ethics while suspending personal bias and demonstrating the capacity for honesty, clear thought and respect (Steneck et al., 2015).

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It is clear that both academic integrity and professional integrity introduce the unconditional need for academic and professional activities to be conducted in an ethical manner. A common link between the two (academic integrity and professional integrity) is the concern about plagiarism. By definition, plagiarism is concerned with identifying unacknowledged use of sources of information, whether intentional or unintentional. Guarding against plagiarism requires that all sources of information and ideas be correctly acknowledged using the right format (Bretag, 2017). Guarding against plagiarism requires a good mastery of language with paraphrasing capabilities. In addition, it requires access to software such as Grammarly, and SafeAssign. These software conduct plagiarism checks, looking for identical phrases and word combinations. Grammarly goes a step further in identifying common grammar, syntax, tenses, sentence structure, spelling and word combination mistakes and suggesting appropriate corrections.

Nursing education and professional practice involve managing interpersonal relationships and complex system. Whether in school or during practice, nurses are entrusted with the responsibility of providing medical care in an environment that includes patients and other medical personnel. Performing in such an environment requires that nurses be respectful. Developing respect and cognizance for others begins in nursing school and continues in the practice environment. Professional integrity and academic integrity is an important component of respect, and is part of the skills developed in school and at work since it addresses issues of conduct and the capacity for responsible practice (Andre & Heartfield, 2012).

Part 3, Section 2

Maintaining integrity of work is an imperative for all nurses in the school and work environment, and it involves upholding the fundamental values of responsibility, fairness, respect, honesty and trust. Although it is important for nurses to uphold these fundamental values, a complex web of situational, behavioral and contextual issues act as motivations that determine the extent to which they uphold these values. Understanding these issues (the complex web of situational, behavioral and contextual issues) is important for developing and pursuing strategies for maintaining academic integrity and professional integrity (Andre & Heartfield, 2012).

There are five strategies that nurses can applying to maintain academic integrity and professional integrity. Firstly, developing competence in ethical and moral reasoning. This requires an understanding of the different ethical theories and familiarizing with their arguments s as to easily apply them in decision-making. Secondly, considering the perspectives of others when facing situations affecting them. This involves not making unilateral decisions in issues affecting others as no single person has all the answers and it is important to consult so as to collect diverse and competing perspectives that would then be used as resources (Bretag, 2017). Thirdly, acting in a manner that contributes to the community. Integrity is all about bettering the community, and having the mind to contribute towards the community helps in maintaining integrity. Fourthly, cultivating integrity by acting with a sense of honor. This includes being honest and acknowledging all sources of information and ideas. Finally, consciously pursuing strong ethics and striving for excellence. Deliberately pursuing strong ethics turns integrity into a habit so that opportunities for violating integrity expectations are eliminated (Hurd, 2019).

References

Andre, K. & Heartfield, M. (2012). Professional Portfolios: Evidence of Competency for nurses and midwives (2^nd ed.). Elsevier.

Bretag, T. (2017). Handbook of Academic Integrity. Springer.

Hurd, H. (Ed) (2019). Moral Puzzles and Legal Perplexities: Essays on the Influence of Larry Alexander. Cambridge University Press.

Steneck, N., Anderson, M., Kleinert, S. & Mayer, T. (Eds) (2015). Integrity in the Global Research Arena. World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.  Academic Integrity and Professional Ethics Discussion Paper