Legal and Ethical Perspectives of Nursing Education

Running head: PROFESSIONAL NURSING
Professional Nursing
Name of the student
University name
Author’s note

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PROFESSIONAL NURSING
Introduction
The current study focuses upon the legal and ethical perspectives of nursing
education. The nursing study is based upon the integration of ethics into care. In order to
develop and ethically and culturally aware nursing professional integrating moral values and
principles as part of a nursing care is quintessential. It is very important that a nursing student
attends their theory and practical classes well. Based upon the knowledge acquired from the
professional sessions and effective and quality care could be delivered. For the current
assignment, the nursing ethics and law has been taken into consideration which are imparted
though the nursing training sessions and also during the clinical trials.
I could relate this to my one of actual clinical setting experiences where I had been
contacted by a fellow nursing student to provide him with screenshots of the online test
which he is going to sit for. Hence, abiding by the wish or demand of the peer would have
been a clear breach of policies and ethics on my part. A more detailed outlook on the ethics
and legal frontier has been provided over here.
Case study 1:
Immediate action
Therefore, based upon the actual scenario one could take a number of immediate
steps. First and foremost, one needs to discuss the matter with the student personally telling
them of the consequences of such action. The nursing educator could tell them that if they get
caught they could be debarred from the future examinations as well as form undertaking any
future courses in the institutions. As mentioned by Lynch et al. (2017), practising such unfair
means to pass the nursing examination is a clear breach of the professional code of practice
and is punishable by law. Hence, any such instigation from a student or peer should not be
entertained by the nursing educator (Melnyk, Gallagher‐Ford, Long & Fineout‐Overholt,
2014).
One more step which one could take over here is calling the supervisor of the
examination centre. As mentioned by Devine & Chin (2018), any such legal breach of
policies should be brought to the notice of the centre supervisor immediately. This would

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PROFESSIONAL NURSING
help in taking immediate measures or steps to stop such dishonest practices. It could also act
as an effective warning measure to prevent people from engaging in such malicious practices
and activities. There are people who have been often found to engage in academic
misconduct or plagiarism which is a huge threat to quality education. In order to cope up with
the huge burden of nursing assignments and in between coursework examination the students
have often been seen to take help from outside sources. As mentioned by Kam, Hue &
Cheung (2018), the students here are paying to agencies which are preparing assignments and
study materials for them. This could be referred to as plagiarism where the students are
presenting the work of someone else’s as theirs or asking someone else to give an online test
on behalf of them. As mentioned by Welsh (2017), such events are threat to academic
integrity and could eventually lead to deterioration of the educational standards. Therefore,
effective measures need to be taken to prevent any such dishonest means or activities.
On a personal level one can motivate my student not to get involved in such academic
dishonesty by helping them control the level of anxiety (Abdulghani etal., 2018). One can
discuss with them the procedures or hand over sample of old question papers.
Subsequent actions
Some of the subsequent actions which could be taken by me over here are become
familiar with the ensuing professional codes so that one knows which steps to be followed
exactly. One should keep the written records of the description of the cheating and the
actions which had been taken subsequently. It would help me in dealing with future events of
academic dishonesty and also ensure that right ethics and culture is maintained around
nursing education. One should report to the supervisor under the faculty academic integrity
reporting system (FAIR). The cases of academic misconduct could be dealt under a number
of jurisdictional perspectives (Fida, Tramontano, Paciello, , Ghezzi & Barbaranelli, 2016). As
a nursing educator one needs to understand the ground based upon which the conditions and
situations of a student could be considered before imposing harsh and stricter punishments
upon them. One should be careful of dealing with the student carefully that is at no stage of
the education process can the educator give threat to the nursing student. Most of the times
the threat given to the students such a dismissal from college or making them flunk in their
examination can bear much negative consequences where the students are seen to indulge in
more such dishonest means. As mentioned by Laschinger, Nosko, Wilk & Finegan (2014),
the indulgence in academic dishonesty is academic dishonesty is often seen to emerge out of