Academic dishonesty among Italian nursing students: A longitudinal study

Abstract

Considering the ethical issues related to nursing and that Ethics is an integral part of the nursing education in the\ud degree course, one would suppose that academic dishonesty might be less frequent in nursing students than in\ud students of other disciplines. However, several studies show that this trend of deceitful behaviour seems to be\ud similar among the university nursing students and those of other disciplines.\ud The aim of this study is to investigate the phenomenon of academic dishonesty in the classroom from a\ud longitudinal perspective within a cohort of Italian nursing students.\ud A non-experimental longitudinal design was used. All nursing students were recruited from the Nursing Science\ud Bachelor Degree Program of a big Italian university in the centre of Italy and participants were part of an ongoing\ud longitudinal research project which started in 2011 on nursing students' wellbeing.\ud The results show that students get accustomed to taking academically deceitful actions. They come to consider\ud their behaviours acceptable and normal, thereby stabilizing them, which increases the probability of stabilizing\ud subsequent deceitful behaviours. The stability through time of academic cheating behaviours committed during\ud higher education, within the study's timeframe, provides important perspectives into the establishment of\ud rigorous standards of ethical and moral behaviours by the students

Academic Dishonesty among Undergraduate Nursing Students

“…The consequence of these undesired behaviours violates trust in the nursing profession to appropriately value human life and care for patients with honesty. It was found that student nurses who were academically dishonest were more likely to commit dishonest acts in clinical practice and this can often translate into harmful patient outcomes [1,3,5,8].…”

“…Academic dishonesty amongst nursing students has become a common occurrence and has drawn a great amount of public scrutiny in recent times [1][2][3]. This is often viewed as the starting point of legal agitation to nursing educators because of the possible impact this will have on existing and subsequent professional practice and patient care [4].…”

“…Some researchers have indicated that in some cases, there is uncertainty as to what actions constitute academic dishonesty [2,3,9]. Though students indicate that they have engaged in the act of having access to examination paper, or falsify information on medication records, students sometimes believe that this is acceptable due to a lack of knowledge, poor practice behaviour and pressure to succeed and complete assigned tasks.…”

“…Interestingly, McCabe [4] suggested that there was no unusual difference between the occurrences of cheating behaviours (a common manifestation of academic dishonesty) in nursing programs, compared with other disciplines. Of note, cheating in nursing programmes is common and supported by literature [2,3,9].…”

“…However, it has been documented that a vast number of nursing students participate in academically dishonest behaviours [5]. Therefore, the threat exists when these unethical behaviours displayed as academic dishonesty are transferred to the nursing practice environment because they often translate into harmful patient outcomes [3,5,8]. For this reason, there should be a clear message of zero tolerance for such behaviour at all levels.…”