Self-plagiarism?

[SoCalSN]

Good afternoon,

I'm turning to this forum to get advice on a scary situation that I'm currently facing. This term I'm repeating a clinical due to receiving a failing grade on the previous clinical care plan. I submitted my care plan two days late due to an emergency family issue, the day it was due we had to move and I literally found out that morning. I didn't communicate the issue with my professor and I take responsibility for that but I just didn't feel comfortable with telling her my situation. When I submitted the care plan, there was a technical difficulty and our techs took responsibility for the issue and I had to fight (literally for a month) to get my care pan graded. Once graded, I received an 88 but with the late deduction it was a 68 and I needed a minimum of 69 or 70 to pass.

Two weeks ago, I submitted my new care plan and received an email from my professor stating I got a zero because I "plagiarized" my old care plan. I let her know that I did use the same resources but she had already escalated the situation to the dean and the academia committee. When I took a look at my care plan, it matched things such as my name, the subheadings in the assignment (pertinent labs, HPI, PIH panel and these are subheadings provided by the program). And other things matched were cited. My professor stated I should've "switched up my words" and used different resources but in my opinion I took this course previously and know exactly what the professors are looking for, clear statements and getting right to the point.

I've met with the dean and she let me know that me using the same resources isn't the issue, the issue is the percentage. Next I meet with the committee. I just feel like the best way to say the sky is blue is saying,"the sky is blue". If there's anyone who had been through this, please comment and let me know how did it work out for you.

[Lunah, MSN, RN]

Now they're trying to say certain things match other papers. Such as patient height, weight, and delivery date.

Ah. That is probably the heart of the matter. Plagiarism checkers like Turnitin (if that's what you had to submit through) will highlight matches like that and will also show the original submission/student paper that it matches (not the entire thing if it's from a different school, but it will show which school it came from). When we have students whose TII scores are high, we're told to disregard things like assignment titles, section headings that come from the rubric, etc. - we know how to read the match report to figure out where the "meat" of the assignment has a high percentage of match. If there is a high percentage of match to other student papers in areas outside of those standard headings, there might not be much you can do; but if a majority of that 74% is from that stuff, then you have a good case to fight it if they don't rule in your favor. 74% is a pretty high percentage; the threshold where I teach is 24%.

Best of luck to you! Please let us know how it turns out.