LibGuides: Nursing: Avoid Plagiarism

Definitions

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as using others’ original ideas in one’s written or spoken work without giving proper credit.

Ideas include but are not limited to:

Facts
Opinions
Quotations
Images
Statistics
Equations
Hypotheses
Theories

Plagiarism can occur in two ways: intentional and unintentional.

A student may intentionally plagiarize in many ways, such as:

Turning in someone else’s work as your own, including another student's work or work produced by an AI such as ChatGPT
Copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
Failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
Giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
Changing words but copying the meaning and sentence structure of a source without giving credit
Copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether giving credit or not
"Repurposing" one's own work or submitting the same work for two different classes without the permission of the instructors.

A student may unintentionally plagiarize when:

Trying in good faith to document your academic work, but failing to do so accurately and/or thoroughly
Plagiarism and documentation have not been addressed in a student's academic coursework and the student is unprepared for college academic writing or speaking.

Outside Websites

Uploading to and/or accessing course materials from external websites such as, but not limited to, Chegg or Course Hero is considered academic dishonesty and plagiarism.

Academic honesty

In academically honest writing or speaking, you must document sources of information whenever:

another person's exact words are quoted.
another person's idea, opinion, or theory is used through paraphrase.
facts, statistics, or other illustrative materials are borrowed.

In order to complete academically honest work, you need to:

acknowledge all sources according to the method of citation preferred by the instructor.
write as much as possible from your own understanding of the materials and in your own voice.

In order to produce academically honest work, you will be able to:

ask an authority on the subject of the work - such as the instructor who assigned the work.
seek help from academic student services such as the library, writing center, math learning center, and/or tutoring center.

Click on these pages to explore how to avoid plagiarism:

Try It!

Create a paraphrase from the quotation below.

Be creative! You may also with to employ some of these paraphrasing tips:

Start at a different point from the original
Use synonyms
Change sentence structure (passive to active voice or vice-versa)
Break up long sentences or combine shorter ones

“Health care organizations’ policies will often stipulate that staff are to remain neutral, not persuading or dissuading a parent’s decision related to adoption. Often, however, the birth mother’s grief and at times revisiting the decision to relinquish the baby will evoke emotions within the nurse who is caring for the mother.”

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