was I wrong

[nrsman1]

I have already posted this in the student forum but i'll put it here as well. Me and another student had to do theses case studies. they are essentially 30 pages of questions. some are what would you do for this patient, some are formulate a nursing diagnosis. I just so happened to complete mine a week before she completed her's. Since my instructor had gave me mine back, I thought I would let her see mine so she would have an idea of what the teacher wanted. Was I wrong in doing this?

[akanini, MSN, RN]

I don't think you did anything wrong but you must be careful. A fellow student was expelled for copying "word for word". She then tried to lie out of it and she and the girl are not friends anymore.

[pagandeva2000, LPN]

I don't believe you did any wrong. But i do think students need to be careful. I had a fellow student almost copy an essay that i did word for word. Lucky for us the lecturer didn't even notice but since then i've been pretty cautious about lending my work to anyone.

Amen to that!! I had one wild situation happen in school during the final semester (med-surg 2). We had group projects due and I usually did mine portion early in the semester to get it out of the way and would then refine it until it was time to submit the final product. One girl in particular, who was always in competition with me had also basically quoted word for word because she had not done her own research. Another group member told me moments before we were to actually present, and I went to her and demanded that she change it immediately. Little did they know that I used to give the professor my progress and allow her to critique it before final submission. Her portion was a wreck, basically. I didn't care anymore, I just felt that the obvious plagerism was disrespectful to me for placing in my hard efforts.

I also saw wild thing happen with people that decide to cheat. Once, during the medical dosage class, student #1 allowed for student #2 to cheat off of her. Student #2 got a higher grade, so, student #1 reported to the professor that she didn't think it was fair that the other student got a higher grade since 'she cheated off of me'. The professor made a unique decision and expelled student #1, saying "Anyone dumb enough to report to me after receiving such a low grade doesn't belong here, and there is no proof, based on the higher grade that this person would have copied off of you". What I suspect happened was that when student #2 saw the answers, it helped her to think harder. Funny enough, neither of them made it into the nursing program.

Personally, I tended to stay away from people and not ask for theirs nor allow them to see mine, unless I already had the professor review and critique my work. This way, the professor saw MY progress, guided me, thus, knew what I was already working on. It kept the professor in the loop and avoided this from happening to me as well. Nursing school is very stressful, and you never know how far people will go to get through. You have to protect yourself, first, at all costs.

[pagandeva2000, LPN]

i had an instructor in one of my medical coding classes that gave take home tests and encouraged us to work together in groups to get these and one big assignment we had to complete on the computer that involved creating a database and graph from a case study. it didn't take long before some of us realized that a few of the students weren't pulling their weight and were just leeching answers off us others. i did report this to the instructor, but she was unimpressed. i can only guess that there had been incidents of cheating in the past and this was her answer to it. besides, we have to take a national certification exam (this is similar to the nclex in nursing, just not required by law, however, you won't get a good high paying job without it) and the cheaters who don't study to learn this material haven't got a snowball's chance in hades of passing this certification exam. i was the first to finish the database and graph case study after putting a lot of hours and thinking into it and earned full points for completing it correctly. of course everyone wanted to see it. there was no way i was giving away the answers to the clues it took me a few sleepless nights and several discarded databases and graphs to figure out. so, what i did was show people my first attempts and revealed nothing else except to read the instructions very carefully and the hints which were boldfaced on the instruction sheet. nursing isn't the only discipline that uses critical thinking skills. as it turned out, one of my classmates very craftily lead me to believe she had turned hers in and it had been graded so she wanted to compare hers with mine. turns out it wasn't true. the minute she saw my database she realized what the big hint was on the instruction sheet was and the part that involved patient confidentiality and she spread it to the rest of the class. and, of course, the instructor didn't care. i let it go and stopped showing up early for class so i wouldn't have to share any more of my case study with people. but the thing i thought was sad was that people were waiting until the last week of class to do this case study which took hours to do on the computer when they needed the time to be preparing for the final exam.

:yeah:i hear you. medical coding is not as easy as people think. i took icd-9 and cpt (which was a bit harder for me). i basically did the same with nursing, i only showed things that i already showed the professor a draft, so that she was in the loop and knew my 'language' and my efforts. you have to protect yourself. there is no way that i would turn over all of my hard efforts to another person who did not intend to put in their part of the labor.

[bassandtea]

I really think it depends if the other person is using you work as a guide or if they will let you see what they have done if you are stuck or unsure of something.

Where I study most of our teachers won't look over our work, so there is a small group of us that will read over work or discuss answers to determine if we are heading in the right direction, however we would never copy the work of somebody else (although we might use some of the same references if somebody finds a particularly good one)

[Nurse Salt]

I think if you are looking here for us to tell you what you did was OK, you might be having doubts about your actions...

School is not a competition and I do believe classmates should use each other as resources, just be careful... Most nursing schools are VERY strict about plagiarism/ cheating (which I am NOT implying was your intent) and even if you were only helping your friend gain a better understanding of the assignment, your faculty may not feel the same.