Abstract:

Academic dishonesty has become a serious problem in higher education and in the study of various professions around the world. Honesty, sincerity, and empathy are essential personal qualities for maintaining professional ethics in nursing. Higher education institutions around the world deal with plagiarism to ensure continuous quality and risk management. Discourses of plagiarism management are mostly surrounded by legal concepts of copyright, and plagiarism policies provide penalties for infringements.

The goal of the research was to find out how the consequences of plagiarism problems during studies are perceived in the professional work of nurses. The study hypothesised that nurses know what plagiarism is and consider it a problem but believe that subsequent sanctions are not necessary. To achieve the research objective, the legal framework of the nursing profession was considered, and the definition of plagiarism was clarified. A survey was conducted to analyse the opinions of working nurses on the awareness and punishment of plagiarism. A comparative qualitative method based on theoretical literature and a quantitative data analysis method was used.

Plagiarism occurs in all academic institutions. Access to online information is ubiquitous, allowing students to copy and paste material with ease. Moreover, it is even possible to buy or order the entire paper. In the United States, for example, at least half or even three-quarters of undergraduate students have reported academic dishonesty. 61% of university students in the Kingdom of Sweden admitted to copying written material without citing the source, 31% admitted to using an essay bank (purchased essays). 89.8% of students in Singapore reported using written material without citing sources. A survey in Austria reveals that 22% of students have used dishonest practises. The corresponding figure for Estonia is 16%.

As a result of the survey, it can be stated that nurses working in Estonia understand the importance of plagiarism and see the need to prevent plagiarism and impose appropriate penalties for its occurrence. The opinion of Estonian nurses about penalties for plagiarism cannot be considered lenient. However, the detection of plagiarism can be problematic. This requires constant awareness raising among teaching staff, students, and nurses. However, the institutional policy for dealing with plagiarism, which in turn prescribes punishment for repeated and serious cases of plagiarism, cannot be considered insignificant. The hypothesis of the paper was thus partially confirmed.

Keywords:

Nurses, registered nurses, nursing, nursing education, plagiarizing.