Concept Analysis Of Integrity In Nursing Students: Importance And Characteristics Essay. (70 Characters)

Select a peer-reviewed concept analysis article of your choice and write a response of 1,000–1,250 words. Use the following guidelines:

1. Include an introduction.

2. Describe the method of analysis, using the article and Chapter 3 of Theoretical Basis for Nursing.

3. Describe the steps of process and the results for each step.

4. Apply the concept to a practice situation.

5. Include a conclusion.
 

Use of Concept Analysis in Nursing

A concept is a general idea arrived from a personal perception of the different events in a given environment. In the nursing world, application of concept analysis is gaining grounds and is becoming accepted as paradigms of practice. According to McEwen and Wills (2014), use of concept analysis offers some sort of structure and organization to nursing knowledge as well as providing a systematic method of acquiring data used to describe, elaborate or predict nursing practice. In the nursing field, concepts can use phrases, statements or just but a simple word. Variables are used alongside these concepts to help validate theories and hypotheses. Concepts can be applied in research, education and or in administration.

Concept analysis as used and adopted by Christine and Elizabeth (2018), authors of the article Integrity in Nursing Students aimed at clarifying the concept of integrity among nursing students. According to Gallop polls, honesty and ethical attributes by the nursing professionals are consistently ranked the highest nationwide. This comes through efforts. The American Nurses Associations has severally challenged the nurses to value their nursing profession through demonstration of character that preserves integrity.  The International Council of Nurses is not left out when it comes to emphasizing the desirable code of conduct that comes with the nursing profession. Encompassed in the code of conduct is respect, compassion, trust, responsiveness, and integrity. Wilk and Bowllan, (2011) note that practicing nurses value integrity and as such, nursing students should emulate their counterparts to maintain the reputation.

The call to nursing students is placed because it is evident that these qualities are nonexistent. In today’s world, cheating in examinations and plagiarizing of the assignments is dominant in almost every learning institution. Further, these students rarely prepare for clinical assessment as well as providing false documents to a patient’s chart. This is a global problem though and has become such common that it is no longer perceived as immoral or dishonesty. The causes of academic dishonesty are the desire to succeed, contest for grade-based scholarships and lack of organization skills by the students. Cheating is viewed by the millennials as acceptable and the discussion has become more fluid on what is ethical or not.

The eight-step procedure by Walker and Avant was used to analyze the different attributes advocated by the nursing professions. The procedure employees a sequential framework for the analysis. It involves choosing a concept, outlining the purpose of the review, identifying the possible applications of the analysis, determining traits, distinguishing model cases, coming up with antecedents and the likely consequences and finally describing the referents empirically (Theart, & Smit, 2012).

Importance of Integrity among Nursing Students

Literature for the research was conducted using Cumulative Index for Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL) and the Social Science Index (SocINDEX). Literature reports that cheating and plagiarism is prevalent in college students. Further investigation was conducted to clarify any connection between integrity and vices of cheating lying and plagiarism. Literature from different subjects was used for the analysis and included radiological science, pharmacy, criminal justice, physician assistants, engineering, law and business studies. Out of the 13 selected articles, nine illustrated application of the theory in non-medical fields. However, the theory had not been performed before. Of the 648 articles that showed a positive result for integrity only 18 were relevant to this analysis.

Integrity is the firm adherence to the moralistic or artistic code. Academic integrity, on the other hand, is the commitment to honesty, respect fairness trust and responsibility. The five elements are the fundamentals every student should uphold at all times. Academic integrity is also linked to professional conduct in the healthcare systems. In the field of radiology, for instance, academic integrity and professional conduct relate to self-monitoring ability and an autonomous performance by an individual. According to Aaron et al, (2011), professional ethics and integrity of the students’ faculty had an influence on student’s integrity, meaning pupils are likely to emulate the character upheld by their seniors. 

With regard to physician assistants and physical therapy students, moral values, that is honesty and high standards of ethics are linked to integrity. In such a setting the relation between physician and his/her assistant is based on mutual trust failure to which they will be playing a hide and seek game on each other. To maintain the high level of conduct by students in this specialty, honor codes and integrity policies were reinforced throughout the study programs (Park, & Jang, 2013).

As pertains to integrity and nursing, the literature reveals some relationship between academic integrity, moral integrity, honor codes, personal accountability and individual responsibility. The connection varies from one source to the other depending on their focus on behavior, which is, cheating and plagiarism which are indications of absence of integrity. These include human dignity, social justice, altruism, autonomy, and uprightness. In discussing the strategies through which college students can employ to improve honesty in the testing environment, Woith et al., 2012 suggests that participant should commit on doing their own work, avoid cheating in assessments as well as not plagiarizing their assignments.

Attributes of Integrity

The main attributes of this analysis as manifested by the source materials used include honesty, moral conduct, and professionalism. As mentioned above these attribute apply to all aspects of one’s life be it academic programs, classroom, clinical or interpersonal character traits. In a classroom setting, the attributes can be improved through adequate preparations, individualized testing, and writing of assessments with ultimate honesty. In a clinical setting, the participant should aim at demonstrating honest communications with their patients’ through sharing their personal abilities and admittance of skills and knowledge limitation in case they are not sure or confident about something. Also, it is advisable to provide accurate information and documentation about a patient at all times.

In line with Walker and Avant’s system of investigation, a model case, a borderline case, relational and contrary cases were utilized for this concept analysis. A personal experience by a nursing student was used as a model case. The student is frustrated by her inability to get 80 percent of an online case study assignment while her classmates are scoring a 100 percent. It later comes to her knowledge that, in order to score a 100, she has to buy an access code to the answers of the case study which she considers as being dishonest.  The premise of this experience provides the setting for the borderline case Baxter, & Boblin, 2007).

An antecedent to this analysis is portrayed by how the student values honesty and integrity. She is conversant of their importance. A consequence of this knowledge is that the same values will be upheld when dealing with future patients after the completion of her college studies. In regard to empirical referents, the literature used for this study does not arrive to a standard empirical measures that can be used to evaluate the influence of integrity to the nursing students

Conclusion

The result of this analysis is that integrity in a nursing student is defined by honesty and moral conduct. Concept analysis as used and adopted by Christine and Elizabeth, the authors of the article, aimed at clarifying the concept of nursing students’ integrity. As opposed to the other published reviews, the researchers wish to identify the defining characteristics associated with integrity. Data used for the analysis was gathered using CINAHL, and SocINDEX. Prior to their research, no study was conducted concerning concept analysis of integrity. 

References

Aaron, L., Simmons, P., & Graham-Webb, D. I. A. N. E. (2011). Academic dishonesty and unprofessional behavior. Radiologic technology, 83(2), 133-140.

American Nurses Association (ANA), 2015. Code of ethics for nurses with iFnterpretive statements. Retrieved from. https://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/EthicsStandards/CodeofEthicsforNurses/Code-ofEthics.pdf (Silver Spring, MD:Author).

Baxter, P. E., & Boblin, S. L. (2007). The moral development of baccalaureate nursing students: Understanding unethical behavior in classroom and clinical settings. Journal of Nursing Education, 46(1), 20-27.

Christine A. Devine, and Elizabeth Danells Chin. "Integrity in nursing students: A concept analysis." Nurse education today60 (2018): 133-138.

McEwen, M., & Wills, E. M. (2014). Theories from the biomedical science. In Theoretical basis for nursing (pp. 331-353). Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Philadelphia.

Park, E. J., Park, S., & Jang, I. S. (2013). Academic cheating among nursing students. Nurse Education Today, 33(4), 346-352.

Theart, C. J., & Smit, I. (2012). The status of academic integrity amongst nursing students at a nursing education institution in the Western Cape. curationis, 35(1), 1-8.

Walker, L. O., & Avant, K. C. (2005). Strategies for theory construction in nursing.

Wilk, N., & Bowllan, N. (2011). Student-generated behavioral guidelines to inform ethical practice: A quality improvement project. Nurse educator, 36(6), 271-275.

Woith, W., Jenkins, S. D., & Kerber, C. (2012, October). Perceptions of academic integrity among nursing students. In Nursing Forum (Vol. 47, No. 4, pp. 253-259).