Responding to Plagiarism

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Specializes in Addictions/Mental Health, Telemetry.

In my first class in the MSN program, I have to address an ethical dilemma that I may face in my chosen advanced nursing role. I plan to specialize in Nursing Education, so the ethical dilemma I wish to focus on in this paper is academic plagiarism. I am interested in feedback from Nurse Educators about this phenomenon and how it is handled in your nursing programs. Thank you, in advance, for your feedback.

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I teach in a BSN program. The first incidence of plagiarism results in a zero grade for the assignment. The second offense may lead to failure of the course, or up to removal from the program. Make no mistake- this is a HUGE problem!

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

Great topic. I lead clinical education for a large healthcare system. We use standardized assessment tools as part of orientation and ongoing competency processes. 10 years ago, cheating was rare, now it is so commonplace that we have adopted high-security measures & continuous proctoring for any type of assessment. When they are 'caught', the individual is usually shocked that we take it so seriously because "everybody did it in school, and nobody cares". In our organization is considered a serious breach of integrity and a cause for termination.

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Specializes in ER, ICU.

I had this happen in my first class! They get a zero for the assignment. It is referred to academic affairs who has a range of options from counseling to being expelled. By the way, this is not an ethical problem. It is for the student, but not for you. You are simply upholding the rules.

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Specializes in Addictions/Mental Health, Telemetry.

Thank you for your insights! I have read in the literature that cheating and plagiarism in happening more these days than in the past. I see it as another sign of our times. Another paper I recently completed focused on incivility in nursing education. It is just indicative of the times we are living in..sad!

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Specializes in ER, ICU.

Regarding incivility, I had that happen with a student who was failing. I immediately reminded her to follow the code of conduct and I didn't get any more guff. Hopefully you have a code of conduct.

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Regarding incivility, I had that happen with a student who was failing. I immediately reminded her to follow the code of conduct and I didn't get any more guff. Hopefully you have a code of conduct.

I'm totally not surprised. This is why most course/faculty evaluations are filled out by students who don't do well. The ones with A & B averages seldom take the time to say something nice on evaluations...

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Specializes in Hospital Education Coordinator.

I believe the acceptance of all types of cheating is due to the information explosion of the past decade or two. We are used to finding and sharing information, and some people see cheating as just that. We even encourage that attitude by requiring research papers with plenty of references. In other words, it is too easy to get ideas from others, then make them your own. What needs to be emphasized is accountability and responsibiity for all actions. Too often, in the clinical setting, when someone experiences a knowledge gap they blame it on others because the resources were not there. It is an expectation.

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Specializes in Nursing Professional Development.

One issue you might want to consider for your project is that different people have different definitions of plagerism and cheating. As an earlier poster said, some (many?) don't understand where the "line they shouldn't cross" actually is. In some cases, they are so used to getting stuff off the internet that they truly don't know the difference between "their own work" and someone else's. Interesting questions include, "How do students define plagerism and/or cheating?" "How much/well has the school laid out the rules for the students and taught them about these things?" "How much have they been allowed to 'get away with' in the past?" etc.

I had 2 students a couple of years ago who were repeating a class because they had failed it the first time they took. They handed in the same final papers they had handed in the year before -- with almost NO revisions. (How stupid was that? They got F's the first time. Did they think I was going to give them A's this time for essentially the same paper?) Anyway ... beyond their stupidity ... submitting the same papers twice is clearly against the school's plagerism rules. I called them on it. After talking with the program director, we decided to give them another chance -- not because we thought they really deserved it, but because they had done a decent job the rest of the semester and only had to pass this course to graduate. If I failed them again, it would mean expulsion from the school. So ... we let them slide with only writing an entirely new paper on a different topic ... and then getting the lowest possible passing grade for the course. They swore they didn't realize that submitting the same paper twice was against the rules, and I actually believed them on that point. They were truly clueless. Overall, I think we probably did the right thing ... but I didn't feel good about it. It led to some discussion among the faculty about how these two poor students had managed to make it all the way to graduation.

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