It is academic dishonesty which can lead to serious consequences. This includes for the students as well as nursing practitioners and those who practice evidence-based medicine. Examples of plagiarism include copy-pasting from a source without providing proper attribution, submitting someone else’s work as your own or self-plagiarizing one’s own work by reusing it in different projects or assignments. Most academic institutions consider all three of these examples to be unacceptable.
Dishonesty of this kind can affect the value of a degree, and therefore its integrity. This type of dishonesty devalues a student’s degree and could cause employers to doubt their credibility. The public’s perception of nursing is also negatively affected by plagiarism, as students who plagiarize give the impression they lack professional ethics and integrity. Finally, plagiarism impedes evidence-based practice since accurate information is essential to making informed decisions about patient care; when sources are improperly cited or not credited at all, this undermines trust in medical research and can lead to unnecessary risks being taken with patients’ well-being.