Week 1 | Part 1: My Academic and Professional Network

I have identified and secured the participation of the following academic (at least two) and professional (at least two) individuals and/or teams to form the basis of my network. This network will help me to clarify my vision for success and will help guide me now and in the future.

Directions: Complete the information below for each member of your network. For more than four entries repeat the items below with details of your additional network member(s) in the ‘ADDITIONAL NETWORK MEMBERS’ section.

As a nursing student, one requires to be mentored and to have people who have already made it in academia and professional practice to look up to. These are the persons who will guide the student and point them in the right way for success. At the same time, the professional mentors will form the student’s network that guides her to achieve proper professional grounding in healthcare and in nursing as a profession (Nowell et al., 2017; Walden University, n.d.).

This part presents four of these important people who will be instrumental in assisting me to achieve both my academic and professional goals. They are my distinguished connections, two being academic members forming my network while the other two being professional members in my network. The academic members will guide me through my academic endeavors as a nursing student, and the other two will guide me as a professional nurse. All four will assist me with clarifying my vision for progress and will help direct me both now and later.

NETWORK MEMBER 1

Name: 

Title: Medical Director

Organization: xx Connaught Hospital

Academic or Professional: Professional

Why I selected this individual and/or team and how they will support my success in the MSN program and as a practicing nurse:

Notes:

I chose xxx as one of my network members since he is a great medical doctor with a lot of experience in the medical profession, and he is exceptionally steady and complimentary of attendants. He feels as if the human services would not work without medical caretakers, and he is additionally superb at clinical instruction. He has a lot of proactivity for attendants to proceed with their training and enjoy the experience. He will have an enduring influence on my professional accomplishment in this program.

NETWORK MEMBER 2

Name: xx

Title: Physician

Organization: Family Medicine

Academic or Professional: Professional

Why I selected this individual and/or team and how they will support my success in the MSN program and as a practicing nurse:

Notes: xxx is a doctor of family medicine at the American Health Network of Columbus, Ohio. xx is one of the specialists that I appreciated a lot while working at Regency Rehabilitation Center. He has an unmatched bedside presence and would not hesitate to instruct and help other people; be it be patients, relatives, or any other person in the clinical field. While around him as an enrolled nurse, he furnished me with an abundance of information that I find useful today as a student and enlisted nurse. As a practicing nurse, I intend to keep gaining from him in and achieve my plans of building my career in the healthcare industry.

NETWORK MEMBER 3

Name: xxx

Title: Owner, Administrator

Organization: Professional Home Health Care

Academic or Professional: Academic

Why I selected this individual and/or team and how they will support my success in the MSN program and as a practicing nurse:

Notes: xx has played a vital role in my career and has been my mentor. He has been in the health care sector for over twenty years and has attended many seminars on home health care agencies. I was fortunate to participate in one of the pediatric workshops and get to meet with him. He was very professional when introducing himself. He conducted the seminar, and one thing that I took home from that seminar was that as a nurse, advocacy is part of our goals and mission as we work in the home health sector. He has scheduled to meet with me for more education on advocacy and how to utilize community resources in the home health care system. Above all, he has demonstrated his passion and strength towards the provision of care as a home health care provider. He continues to reiterate how he relies on the nurse to ensure the quality of care is above board and to provide health promotion reaches the less privileged in the community. His support for community health care has inspired me to purpose my goal as a Family Nurse Practitioner.

NETWORK MEMBER 4

Name: xxx

Title: Senior Enrollment Advisor

Organization: Walden University

Academic or Professional: Academic

Why I selected this individual and/or team and how they will support my success in the MSN program and as a practicing nurse:

Notes: xxxx has been an exceptionally reassuring presence for me as I began the program at Walden. He has inspired me to start the Family Nurse Practitioner program this year. He was instrumental in urging me to stop hesitating but to feel free to commence the program. He ensured that I had everything that I required to be on schedule and helped me to move classes that I did not believe were transferable. Without xxx, I feel that I would still be mulling over whether to begin studies at a later date.

            In conclusion, I feel extremely privileged to have these academics and professionals who are committed to ensuring that I succeed both as a nursing student in academia, and also as a professional nurse after graduation.

References

Nowell, L., Norris, J.M., Mrklas, K., & White, D.E. (2017). A literature review of mentorship programs in academic nursing. Journal of Professional Nursing, 33(5), 334–344. Doi:10.1016/j.profnurs.2017.02.007

Walden University (n.d.). 5 benefits of mentorship in nursing. Retrieved 6 June 2020 from https://www.waldenu.edu/online-masters-programs/master-of-science-in-nursing/resource/five-benefits-of-mentorship-in-nursing  

Week 2 | Part 2: Academic Resources and Strategies

I have identified the following academic resources and/or strategies that can be applied to success in the nursing practice in general or my specialty in particular.

Directions: In the space below Identify and describe at least three academic resources or strategies that can be applied to the MSN program, and at least three professional resources that can be applied to success in the nursing practice in general or your specialty in particular. For each, explain how you intend to use these resources, and how they might benefit you academically and professionally.

Academic Resource/Strategy 1

The first academic resource that is useful to the MSN nursing student is research databases. These are very useful to the student as a budding academic. Postgraduate nursing students are expected to carry out research during the course and to build their academic portfolios. To come up wih the literature that they use to support their problem statements and theoretical frameworks, the postgraduate nursing students must access up-to-date published peer-reviewed journal articles in their areas of interest. Research databases provide the solution to this by opening up access to a rich repository of previous published scholarly works. And because the contemporary practice now is to only employhealthcare interventions that are evidence-based, MSN nurse students are trained to make clinical inquiry into traditional healthcare practices by questioning their appropriateness. Through this they are able to come up with PICOT (population, intervention, comparison, outcome, and timeframe) statements and questions fr which they then have to find support from published scholarly works. Again, the only available resource to help them do this are the research databases. Examples of these research databases are CINAHL, Embase, Cochrane, and PsychINFO (Bond, n.d.).

Academic Resource/Strategy 2

The second academic resource that the postgraduate MSN nurse student can make use of are the peer-reviewed journals published after scientific research and observations. The journals contain authoritative information that has been verified and counter-checked by academic peers in the same field as the authors. MSN nurse students are required in the course of doing their projects to only use credible authoritative sources to back their academic arguments. Peer-reviewed academic journals provide these credible scholarly sources in the form of published articles. In being able to access and use published articles from peer-reviewed journals, the MSN nurse student not only benefits by getting information, but also by seeing how scholarly research is conducted. Examples of these peer-reviewed nursing journals include the Journal of Nursing Administration (JONA), Journal of Advanced Nursing, and Journal of Nursing Education (Bond, n.d.).

Academic Resource/Strategy 3

The third and last academic resource for the postgraduate MSN nursing student are the annual scientific conferences that are organized by the various professional nursing organizations such as the American Nurses Association (ANA) and the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP). Almost all of these associations have provisions for student membership alongside the usual membership by qualified and practicing nurses. The students (such as the MSN students) benefit academically when they attend the annual scientific conferences that are organized by these professional associations. They get to hear feedback from the latest nursing research and also learn about innovations by nurse scholars (Bond, n.d.).

Professional Resource/Strategy 1

On professional resources, it follows that when the student has obtained membership of a professional association as a student to benefit from the annual scientific conferences as stated above, they will retain the membership as professional nurses. Professional nursing associations are therefore the first professional resource that the MSN student will require once they graduate. There are very many professional nursing associations in the country. Examples of these professional nursing associations are the National Association of Neonatal Nurses, the Transcultural Nursing Society, and the National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists amongst others. Apart from enabling the qualified professional MSN nurse to network with colleagues from different parts of the country, these professional associations and organizations also provide the opportunity for advocacy and leadership (Nurse.org., n.d.).

Professional Resource/Strategy 2

The next professional resource for the qualified MSN nurse are the professional certification organizations and institutions. When a qualified MSN nurse is certified in her area of expertise, they become more respected and marketable to employers. Furthermore, it becomes easier to obtaing licensure to practice in many states when the MSN nurse is certified. In fact, in some of the states it is mandatory to have certification from a recognized body before being granted licensure to practice in the state. Examples of these MSN nurse certification bodies and organizations are the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners Certification Board (AANPCB) and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) amongst others (Wolters Kluwer, 2013).

Professional Resource/Strategy 3

The third and last professional resource for the qualified MSN nurse is the state board of nursing where the nurse intends to practice. Every state board of nursing is responsible for regulating the practice of every nursing discipline within the borders of the state. They decide the scope of practice and offer renewable licensure at a fee. For example, the different state boards of nursing allow different levels of autonomy of ractice to nurse practitioners (NPs). This is the reason why in some states nurse practitioners have complete independence of practice or full practice authority (FPA), while in others their autonomy is taken away under legislation that calls for either restricted or reduced practice. Restricted and reduced practice both mean that the nurse practitioner cannot see patients and treat them independently without referring to the supervising physician. The body that administers licensure examinations to qualified registered nurses is called the National Council of State Boards of Nursing or NCSBN. It is a body that is composed of members from all the state boards of nursing from across the country (NCSBN, n.d.).

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES/STRATEGIES

Nil.

References

Bond, J. (n.d.). 85 great resources for MSN students. Retrieved 10 March 2020 from https://www.bestmasterofscienceinnursing.com/student-resources/

National Council of State Boards of Nursing [NCSBN] (n.d.). Leading regulatory excellence. Retrieved 7 June 2020 from https://www.ncsbn.org/index.htm

Nurse.org (n.d.). List of nursing organizations. Retrieved 7 June 2020 from https://nurse.org/orgs.shtml

Wolters Kluwer (2013). Guide to nursing certification organizations: Specialty certification organizations 2013. Dimensions of Critical Care Nursing, 32(4), 175-177. DOI: 10.1097/DCC.0b013e318299806fk

Week 3 | Part 3: Strategies to Promote Academic Integrity and Professional Ethics

I have analyzed the relationship between academic integrity and writing, as well as the relationship between professional practices and scholarly ethics. I have also identified strategies I intend to pursue to maintain integrity and ethics of my academic work while a student of the MSN program, as well as my professional work as a nurse throughout my career. The results of these efforts are shared below.

Directions: In the space below craft your analysis/writing sample, including Part 1 (The Connection Between Academic and Professional Integrity) and Part 2 (Strategies for Maintaining Integrity of Work).

Part 1: Writing Sample: The Connection Between Academic and Professional Integrity

In the space below write a 2- 3-paragraph analysis that includes the following:

• Explanation for the relationship between academic integrity and writing
• Explanation for the relationship between professional practices and scholarly ethics
• Cite at least 2 resources that support your arguments, being sure to use proper APA formatting.
• Use Grammarly and SafeAssign to improve the product.
• Explain how Grammarly, Safe Assign, and paraphrasing contributes to academic integrity

Writing and academic integrity go hand in hand. What this means is that as an academic student, anything that you write should represent your own original ideas. However, academic integrity recognizes that in developing one’s own ideas, they may need to refer to another scholar’s past published ideas in order to develop theirs. Academic integrity therefore does not bar this. What it does is place a responsibility on the writer who is making reference to another person’s ideas to make sure that they cite their sources and give due credit to the owner of the idea referred to. Not doing this is academic dishonesty and blatant plagiarism, something that is unacceptable in academia. For a student such as an MSN student, it is even a more serious offence that may have far-reaching consequences such as expulsion from a course (Waghid & Davids, 2019).

When the MSN student is training; the ultimate goal is to graduate and become a respected nursing professional. It follows that if an MSN student shows traits of academic dishonesty, chances are that she will transfer this behavior to her professional practice. This is the close relationship that exists between scholarly ethics/ integrity and professional practice (Shepherd, 2017). The MSN nurse student who shows disrespect for scholarly ethics will therefore turn out to be a dishonest nurse professional who cannot be trusted.

Grammarly, SafeAssign, and the art of paraphrasing are all helpful in maintaining academic integrity in that they are tools that are designed to spot dishonesty or plagiarism by scholars. Grammarly not only checks for grammatical mistakes in an academic paper, but also checks for plagiarism in the paper. SafeAssign on its part compares submitted student papers to previously submitted papers and checks for similarity, which would indicate plagiarism. Lastly, paraphrasing as an art enables the student to refer to another person’s ideas without using their exact words before citing the source (Calonia, 2019).

PART 2: Strategies for Maintaining Integrity of Work

Expand on your thoughts from Part 1 by:

• Identifying and describing strategies you intend to pursue to maintain integrity and ethics of your 1) academic work while a student of the MSN program, and 2) professional work as a nurse throughout your career. Include a review of resources and approaches you propose to use as a student and a professional.

There are several strategies that the MSN nursing student can use to maintain academic integrity and ethics during their study. The first thing is to make sure that they try as much as possible to always write what is originally a product of their own thoughts. This will score them better marks as a postgraduate student who is a critical thinker. But since it is almost impossible to operate as an academic island, the second strategy as an MSN student would be to make sure that you attribute any borrowed idea to the rightful owner. This is achieved by correctly citing sources and giving credit to the true owner or originator of a thought. As a professional nurse, the strategy to maintain integrity and ethics at the workplace is to always be truthful and forthright in dealing with patients and their loved ones. You should always be guided by the professional ethics of nursing and its code of conduct. The other strategy to do this is to always abide by the four bioethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. For instance, doing this will mean respecting the privacy of patient information as required by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA (CDC, 2018). Mishandling a patient’s information can result in damage to the patient’s reputation and other undesired consequences, the result of which will be that the patient suffers psychological harm. This will violate the ethical principle of nonmaleficence or primum non nocere, as stated above.

The resources and approaches to use to achieve academic integrity and maintain professional ethics in practice include the use of plagiarism checkers like SafeAssign and Grammarly, the nursing standards of practice, legislation such as HIPAA, and the nursing code of ethics.  In conclusion, therefore, a nursing student must start practicing academic integrity as a student as this will impact their later life as a nursing professional.

References

Calonia, (2019). How to avoid plagiarism in your work: 5 effective methods. Grammarly Blog. Retrieved 8 June 2020 from https://www.grammarly.com/blog/5-most-effective-methods-for-avoiding-plagiarism/

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] (Sepetember 14, 2018). Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Retrieved 9 June 2020 from  https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/publications/topic/hipaa.html

Shepherd, J. (2017). The relationship between academic integrity and professional practice. The Practicing Midwife, 20(5):13-16. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30549962/

Waghid,Y. & Davids, N. (2019). On the polemic of academic integrity in higher education. South African Journal of Higher Education, 33(1), 1-5. Doi: https://doi.org/10.20853/33-1-3402

Week 4 | Part 4: Research Analysis

I have identified one topic of interest for further study. I have researched and identified one peer-reviewed research article focused on this topic and have analyzed this article.  The results of these efforts are shared below.

Directions: Complete Step 1 by using the table and subsequent space below identify and analyze the research article you have selected. Complete Step 2 by summarizing in 2-3 paragraphs the results of your analysis using the space identified.

Step 1: Research Analysis

Complete the table below

Step 2: Summary of Analysis

Craft a summary (2-3 paragraph) below that includes the following:

• Describe your approach to identifying and analyzing peer-reviewed research
• Identify at least two strategies that you would use that you found to be effective in finding peer-reviewed research
• Identify at least one resource you intend to use in the future to find peer-reviewed research

Week 5 | Part 5: Professional Development

I have developed a curriculum vitae to capture my academic and professional accomplishments to date. I have also developed a statement identifying one or more professional development goals, and a statement proposing how I might align one or more of these professional development goals with the University’s emphasis on social change.

The results of my efforts are below.

Directions: Complete Step 1 by developing (or copying and pasting) a curriculum vitae (CV) in the space provided. Complete Step 2 by completing a statement identifying your professional development goals space identified. Complete Step 3 by writing a statement proposing how you might align one or more of your professional development goals with the University’s emphasis on social change.

Step 1: Curriculum Vitae (CV)

Use the space below to write your CV based on your current education and professional background. Alternatively, you may write this in a separate document and copy/paste the results below.

NOTE: If needed there are a variety of online resources available with tips and samples of graduate nurse CVs.

Step 2: Professional Development Goals

Use the space below to write a statement identifying your professional development goals.

Step 3: Alignment with Social Change

Use the space below to write a statement proposing how you might align one or more of your professional development goals with the University’s emphasis on social change.

Week 6 | Part 6: Finalizing the Plan

I have considered various options for my nursing specialty, including a close look at my selected (or currently preferred) specialty and second-preferred specialty.  I have also developed a justification of my selected (or preferred) specialty. Lastly, I have examined one professional organization related to my selected or preferred specialty and considered how I can become a member of this organization.

The results of my efforts are below.

Directions: Complete Step 1 by writing 2-3 paragraphs in the space below comparing the nursing specialty you have selected – or the one you prefer if your choice is still under consideration –  to your second preference. Identify each specialty and describe the focus and the role that graduates are prepared for. Identify any other differentiators you feel are significant, especially those that helped or may help you reach a decision.

Complete Step 2 by writing a paragraph identifying and justifying your reasons for choosing your MSN specialization. Be sure to incorporate any feedback you received from colleagues in this week’s Discussion Forum.

Complete Step 3 by examining and identifying one professional organization related to your selected or preferred specialty. Explain how you can become a member of this organization.

Step 1: Comparison of Nursing Specialties

Use the space below to write 2-3 paragraphs comparing the nursing specialty you have selected – or the one you prefer if your choice is still under consideration –  to your second preference. Identify each specialty and describe the focus and the role that graduates are prepared for. Identify any other differentiators you feel are significant, especially those that helped or may help you reach a decision.

Step 2: Justification of Nursing Specialty

Use the space below to write a paragraph identifying and justifying your reasons for choosing your MSN specialization. Be sure to incorporate any feedback you received from colleagues in this week’s Discussion Forum.

Step 3: Professional Organizations

Use the space below to identify and examine one professional organization related to your selected or preferred specialty. Explain how you can become a member of this organization.