Discuss the issues of integrity Essay
Pozgar's three news clippings look like a pick-one exercise, but the essay is assessed on virtue ethics while the discussion questions under each clipping are worded in legal and outcome terms. Plan for character-based reasoning compressed into one to two pages, with two of the four answers uncitable by design.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · July 28, 2026
What is the Pozgar integrity essay actually asking?
The brief sets one essay with three possible subjects, and the choice is not cosmetic: whichever clipping you pick, the four discussion questions printed under it become your required structure. Choosing #1 commits you to arguing about criminal liability for a wrong-site operation. Choosing #2 commits you to returning a verdict on a political cover-up. Choosing #3 commits you to the ethics of a surgeon who offers prayer before high-risk surgery. Announce the choice in the first sentence — "Be sure to clearly identify the news clipping you selected" is a stated requirement and the cheapest mark available.
The trap sits in the mismatch between how the questions are worded and what is being assessed. This is a virtue ethics essay, drawn from the virtue ethics material in Pozgar, but the questions speak the vocabulary of law and consequences: should criminal charges be considered, what is your verdict, how much pressure was placed on the patient. Answer them literally and you produce a deontological or utilitarian essay — rules broken, harms caused — without ever reasoning about character. Virtue ethics asks something else: what do these actions reveal about the agent's settled dispositions, and what would a practitioner of practical wisdom have done at each decision point? Integrity in particular is a trait before it is a compliance outcome, so "the surgeon breached the Universal Protocol" is a finding, not an analysis. The analysis is what the breach, and far more importantly the conduct after it, shows about the person.
The second constraint is arithmetic. One to two pages in APA is roughly 250 to 500 words of body text covering four questions, on top of a title page and a reference list. That is sixty to a hundred and twenty words per question. Any retelling of the news story eats the budget you need for questions 3 and 4 — and those two are the only ones nobody but you can write. Assume your instructor has watched the video. Summarise the case in a clause, not a paragraph.
The third thing to plan for is a register shift the brief requires without naming it. Questions 1 and 2 are analytic, and the brief says to cite all sources in APA. Questions 3 and 4 are first-person reflection and cannot be cited at all. Both live in the same short essay, so it has to move from "the AMA requires disclosure of an error even when disclosure changes nothing clinically" to "on my unit, integrity looks like..." without the second half collapsing into unsupported opinion. What usually earns the marks is anchoring the reflection to something nameable rather than to a feeling — an incident-reporting route you actually use, a time-out step, a chaplaincy referral pathway, a policy on discussing beliefs with patients.
One practical note on sources. The brief points at videos, downloadable scripts and "Find Out More" articles by title, and those belong to your course page — use them first. It also says outright that "You may use these and other outside sources to frame your discussion", so a reference list drawn only from the course materials is an under-read rather than a safe choice. Treat the outside sources below as a way to get the facts of the case straight and the theory named correctly, not as a replacement for the clipping you were assigned.
Likely learning objectives
- Apply virtue ethics — character, disposition, practical wisdom — to a real reported incident rather than to a hypothetical, which is likely where most of the 40 points sit given the brief names both the theory and the textbook chapter.
- Distinguish a virtue-based judgement from the legal and consequentialist judgement the question wording invites; the assessor is likely watching whether "should charges be brought" is answered in terms of what the conduct reveals about character, and not only in terms of what the law permits.
- Hold a defensible position under a severe length constraint, since four questions inside one to two pages tends to reward selection over coverage.
- Connect a published case to your own practice setting through a named standard or process rather than a general sentiment — the fourth question in all three clippings asks for exactly this, and it is where short reflective essays usually thin out.
- Use APA citation for the factual claims about the case while leaving the reflective answers uncited, which the brief requires implicitly by pairing "cite all sources" with two personal questions.
Assignment instructions
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Week_1_Virtue_Ethics_Essay.docx (19.82 KB) Week 1 Virtue Ethics Essay Respond to one of the following three “news clippings” related to virtue ethics from your Pozgar text. Write a 1- 2 page essay addressing the discussion questions posed for the one you selected. Be sure to clearly identify the news clipping you selected. Adhere to APA formatting and cite all sources. Review the rubric for further information on how your assignment will be graded. Due: Sunday, 11:59 p.m. (Pacific time) Points: 40 Watch the following 3 videos and choose one to address for your assignment. #1. Wrong-Operation Doctor Download Script Find Out More: You may use these and other outside sources to frame your discussion. The Pain of Wrong Site Surgery Judgment Upheld in Arkansas Brain Surgery Lawsuit National Quality Forum Assignment Discussion Questions 1. Discuss the issues of integrity in this case. 2. Should criminal charges be considered in this case, if accurately reported? Discuss your answer. 3. Why did you choose to respond to this story? 4. How is integrity displayed in your clinical setting? #2. Cheney’s Staff Cuts Testimony on Warming Download Script Find Out More: You may use these and other outside sources to frame your discussion. The full story Cheney’s Staff Cut Testimony On Warming CDC on Air Quality Assignment Discussion Questions 1. Discuss how headlines such as this affect your opinion of politicians. 2. At the end of our days, the most basic principles of life–trust and survival–are on trial. What is your verdict, if you believe there was a cover-up?. 3. Why did you choose to respond to this story? 4. How are government and political trust displayed in your clinical setting? #3. Surgeon Uses Ministry in Medical Practice Download Script Find Out More: You may use these and other outside sources to frame your discussion. The full story: Praying with patients: A Dallas surgeon finds a way to put ministry into practice Should Your Doctor Pray With You? South Korean Hospitals Shut Over MERS Fears; 11th Person Dies Note the picture in this article Assignment Discussion Questions 1. Discuss the pressure, if any, placed on the patient to responding to the suggestion of prayer prior to surgery. 2. Describe how you, as the surgeon, or nurse, would address a patient’s religious or spiritual needs if the risks of a complex surgical procedure appear to be threatening. 3. Why did you choose to respond to this story? 4. How is religion or faith displayed in your clinical setting?
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01Respond to ONE of the three news clippings: the wrong-operation doctor, Cheney's staff cutting testimony on warming, or the surgeon who uses ministry in medical practice.
- 02Watch the three videos and choose one to address for the assignment.
- 03Clearly identify which news clipping you selected.
- 04Write a 1-2 page essay addressing the discussion questions posed for the clipping you chose — four questions in each case.
- 05Adhere to APA formatting and cite all sources.
- 06Review the rubric for further information on how the assignment will be graded.
- 07Worth 40 points; due Sunday, 11:59 p.m. Pacific time.
How do you structure the clipping-based essay?
Identify the clipping and state a character claim
Name which of the three clippings you selected in the opening sentence, compress the facts into a single clause, and state the judgement the rest of the essay defends — for instance that the wrong-site operation is a failure of integrity located in the conduct after the error rather than in the error itself.
What the assessor is likely looking for
That the clipping is unambiguously identified, which the brief states outright, and that the opening claim is about the agent's character rather than a summary of what happened.
Question 1 — the named virtue, argued from character
Answer the first discussion question in virtue terms: which disposition was absent or present, at which decision point a person of practical wisdom would have acted differently, and how habituation and institutional culture bear on that. For clipping #1 the virtue is integrity; for #2 truthfulness and public trust; for #3 respect and restraint in the use of a power differential.
What the assessor is likely looking for
Virtue vocabulary used as analysis rather than decoration — practical wisdom, habituation, disposition — with integrity treated as consistency between the agent's judgement and their act, not as a synonym for compliance.
Question 2 — the evaluative judgement the clipping forces
Take a position on the harder second question — criminal charges, a verdict on the cover-up, or the pressure that a prayer offer places on a pre-operative patient — and reconcile it with the virtue framing, since virtue ethics is notoriously weak at producing verdicts. Say explicitly what work the virtue account can and cannot do here.
What the assessor is likely looking for
A committed answer with reasons, plus awareness that virtue ethics is criticised precisely on action-guidance; hedging in both directions reads as avoidance in an essay this short.
Question 3 — why you chose this story
Give a reason that ties the clipping to your own professional exposure or to the specific virtue at stake, in two or three sentences. It is a stated question, so omitting it forfeits marks outright, but it is also the section that should be shortest.
What the assessor is likely looking for
A reason connected to the case and to practice rather than a statement that the topic was interesting; the question appears in all three clippings and is what tests whether the choice was deliberate.
Question 4 — the virtue in your own clinical setting
Answer the setting-specific final question by naming a concrete mechanism where you work — an incident-reporting route, a surgical time-out, a chaplaincy referral pathway, a policy on discussing beliefs with patients — and say whether it actually works. If you chose clipping #2, this is the awkward hinge from national politics to the clinical floor, so make the link explicit instead of leaving it to be inferred.
What the assessor is likely looking for
A named practice or process rather than a general claim that integrity matters, and for clipping #2 an explicit bridge from political trust to institutional trust inside a care setting.
Which sources support virtue-ethics reasoning?
Recommended databases
- AHRQ Patient Safety Network (PSNet)
- AMA Code of Medical Ethics and AMA Journal of Ethics
- PubMed / MEDLINE
- CINAHL
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Search sequence
- 1.Start from the Pozgar chapter that supplied the clipping and note the virtue vocabulary it actually uses; the essay is marked against that framing, not against a general ethics search.
- 2.Read the Stanford Encyclopedia entries on virtue ethics and on integrity, and separate integrity-as-self-integration from integrity-as-standing-for-something — that distinction gives you a thesis for question 1 in about two sentences.
- 3.For clipping #1, search PSNet for wrong-site surgery to get the never-event classification and an incidence estimate, then pull the AMA Code opinion on promoting patient safety for the disclosure and reporting duties.
- 4.For clipping #2, locate the primary record of the edited testimony rather than a news summary of it, so the cover-up question is argued from what was actually cut.
- 5.For clipping #3, search PubMed for physician-initiated religious discussion and professional boundaries, and prefer treatments of the power differential over surveys of how common prayer is.
- 6.Stop at three to five sources. A 1-2 page essay cannot carry more, and a long reference list hanging off a short body invites the marker to check whether the sources were used.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Virtue Ethics
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · 2026
The theory the essay is assessed on, in a citable form. Section 1.2 on practical wisdom gives you the standard for what the agent should have done; section 3's objections, especially on action-guidance and conflict, are what you acknowledge when question 2 demands a verdict. It supplies no facts about any of the three cases.
Integrity
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · 2025
Directly on the word the title question turns on. It separates integrity as self-integration, as fidelity to identity-conferring commitments, and as Calhoun's standing for something in public. Commit to one of those readings and your answer to question 1 has a defensible shape instead of restating that the surgeon behaved badly.
Wrong-Site, Wrong-Procedure, and Wrong-Patient Surgery
Patient Safety Network, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality · 2024
For clipping #1 only. Supplies the never-event classification the brief's own National Quality Forum link points at, the three components of the Universal Protocol, and an incidence estimate, so the essay is not arguing from the video alone. Being a patient-safety source, it will not give you the criminal-liability argument question 2 wants.
Opinion 8.6: Promoting Patient Safety
American Medical Association, Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs · 2016
For clipping #1's integrity question. It sets the duty to disclose an error to the patient even when disclosure will not change their treatment, and the duty to report through protected mechanisms. That is what converts "a mistake was made" into a character question about what the surgeon did next.
The censored testimony of CDC Director Julie Gerberding
Government Accountability Project · 2007
For clipping #2. It hosts both the draft testimony and the version delivered to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, so the cover-up question can be argued from what was removed rather than from a headline. The publisher is a whistleblower advocacy organisation — say so when you cite it, and lean on the hosted documents rather than the commentary around them.
When (if ever) may doctors discuss religion with their patients?
Bioethics (Wiley), via PubMed Central · 2023
For clipping #3. Notini and Oakley argue the restrictive line — that clinicians should confine themselves to asking about values and referring to chaplaincy — which gives you a stated position to agree with or push against on the question about pressure on the patient. It is deliberately one-sided, so cite it as an argument rather than as consensus.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Answering the discussion questions in legal or consequentialist terms — rules broken, harms caused — and never performing virtue analysis, which is the theory the assignment is built on.
- Spending most of a two-page budget retelling a news clipping the instructor assigned and has already watched, then giving questions 3 and 4 one sentence each.
- Responding to more than one clipping, or never stating which one was chosen, when the brief asks explicitly for that identification.
- Treating integrity as a synonym for following the Universal Protocol, so the essay describes a procedural breach rather than a character failure — the post-incident conduct is usually where the integrity question actually lives.
- On clipping #3, deciding the surgeon's prayer is either obviously benign or obviously coercive without addressing the power differential and the timing immediately before a high-risk operation.
- On clipping #2, writing a political opinion piece and then abandoning the fourth question, which requires the link back to trust in a clinical setting.
- Citing nothing because two of the four questions are personal, or bolting citations onto the reflective answers, when the brief pairs "cite all sources" with two questions that cannot be cited.
Submission checklist
- The opening sentence names which of the three clippings you selected.
- All four discussion questions for that clipping have their own answer, in the order the brief lists them.
- At least one paragraph reasons explicitly in virtue terms — character, disposition, practical wisdom — rather than in terms of rules or outcomes.
- The body runs 1-2 pages excluding the title page and reference list, per the brief.
- Every factual claim about the case carries an APA in-text citation, and every in-text citation has a matching reference-list entry.
- The answers to questions 3 and 4 name something concrete from your own setting rather than a general sentiment.
- The rubric has been read and each of its criteria maps onto something visible in the essay.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read Brinevia's academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Ryan Harper
MSc, Health Sciences
evidence-based practice implementation and care-transition safety
Ryan leads the Brinevia editorial desk. He works on how nursing coursework briefs translate into a plan a student can actually execute on a real unit.
Reviewed by
Dr. Laura Bennett
DNP, RN, CNE
Evidence-based practice and clinical education
Laura is a doctorally-prepared nurse educator. She reviews Brinevia content for clinical accuracy and alignment with current evidence-based guidelines.