DQ 2 :List three examples of plagiarism and discuss how plagiarizing as a student affects the integrity of a baccalaureate degree, the public perception of the nursing profession, and evidence-based practice.

Count the deliverables: three examples, three consequences and two commitments. The examples should not all be the obvious one. Copying text without attribution is the first thing anyone thinks of, but paraphrasing an argument without citing it, reusing your own previously submitted work, patch-writing from a source with a few words changed, fabricating a citation, and citing a source you never read are all distinct forms with distinct causes, and choosing three that differ from each other shows you understand the category rather than the stereotype. Fabricated citations deserve a mention because they are increasingly produced by generative tools, look completely plausible, and are only detectable by opening the reference. Self-plagiarism is the other one worth choosing, because students routinely believe that reusing their own work cannot be an offence, and most institutional policies say otherwise unless the reuse is declared and approved in advance.

Then take the three consequences apart, because they are not the same argument three times. The degree consequence is about warrant: a baccalaureate degree certifies that a specific person can do specific things, and plagiarised work certifies nothing, which devalues the credential for everyone holding it. The public perception consequence rests on something measurable and worth citing, which is nursing's standing in the Gallup honesty and ethics poll across two decades; trust of that kind is an asset the profession spends and cannot quickly rebuild. The evidence-based practice consequence is the strongest and the one usually missed. Evidence-based practice is a chain of attribution: a practice change is defensible only because it traces to a study that was actually conducted and actually says what the citation claims. A nurse trained to break that chain in coursework carries the habit into a policy proposal where a fabricated citation becomes a patient-safety problem rather than a grading one.