The impact of side effects on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder patients' adherence to prescribed medical therapy

Academic and Professional Success Plan Template

Prepared by:

Professor:

Introduction

Psychiatric nursing is an essential career in society, particularly in contributing to the organization's development and well-being. There has been a growing need for health care providers who can assist community members in mental health and psychological well-being. The mental health of a person is an excellent determinant of the person's overall success; thus, a need to establish a team of competent mental health experts in society for a better future. In becoming a psychiatric nurse practitioner, a lot is needed other than attaining the grades and attending nursing of graduated school. One must better understand what occurs in the field, ways to become a better professional, among other factors. Among the items that a professional must realize is the process followed by psychiatric nurse practitioners in addressing the mental needs of a person. Among the things in the process include assessing mental health needs and developing a nursing plan of care. In a psychiatric nursing plan of care, certain factors are considered, including the age of the patient or client, the underlying factors, and the best practices in addressing such health needs. With such complex processes, I considered gaining a master's program crucial to becoming better at my career as a psychiatric nurse practitioner.

Purpose statement

Becoming a competent psychiatric nurse practitioner requires much commitment towards academic and professional excellence. It requires gaining as much knowledge as possible from books, clinical, and other educational materials. Also, it involves consulting other experts in different areas of nursing or academics. Among the people to consult include psychiatric professionals such as psychiatrists, other advanced practitioners, and professors who play a vital role in shaping your progress. 

Week 1 | Part 1: Developing an Academic and Professional Network

NETWORK MEMBER 1

Name: Claudia Lonescu

Title: Student Success Advisor

Organization: Walden University

Academic or Professional: Academic

A student success advisor is an essential person in my career and journey through the MSN program. The reason for selecting the student success advisor as one of the participants in the network is because the student adviser has a deep understanding of the factors that affect students in school. She will offer me academic coaching and guidance. She will be responsible for aiding me in developing my educational objectives. This is an essential foundation in getting me the support needed to keep me engage and motivated. From the experience of interacting with students, the student success advisor has a better understanding of ways to deal with various psychological and mental issues affecting students in general. This would assist me in becoming more efficient and developing the right attitude and understanding towards becoming an advanced psychiatric nurse practitioner.

NETWORK MEMBER 2

Name: Faculty at Walden University MSN Program.

Title: My Instructor

Organization: Walden University

Academic or Professional: Academic

The faculty will be essential for my success during learning and in my professional practice, specifically, my professors who will actively impart knowledge to me through teaching and giving relevant instructions as per the curriculum. The faculty at Walden University has a respectable track record for nurturing students into performing well academically. Thus, I will rely on the experience of my professors to ensure that I gain all the information and technical know-how that is essential for my success as a practicing nurse.

The faculty will be responsible for enhancing my learning experience. Considering that my class is made up of diverse students, I will expect the faculty to be innovative and try to innovate and customize the education experience to suit the various learning styles of the students. Also, the faculty will have to monitor my progress regularly and identify my weaknesses while relaying a plan to help me overcome them.

NETWORK MEMBER 3

Name: Charles Guillaumu

Title: Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner

Organization: Summit Ridge Hospital

Academic or Professional: Professional

The guidance of a psychiatric nurse practitioner provides accurate application guidance on the specifics of the field. This is crucial in the MSN program as it exposes one to the expectations in the industry on understanding the role of an advanced psychiatry nurse practitioner in society. Furthermore, it equips one with skills early before one venture into the actual field as an independent practitioner. Interacting with a professional already in the field desire enhances one’s understanding of the expectation and the needed knowledge in a real-life scenario.

NETWORK MEMBER 4

Name: Nursing Association (APNA).

Title: Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner

Organization: The American Psychiatric Nurse Association (APNA).

Academic or Professional: Professional

As an advanced nurse practitioner, I will be responsible for caring for patients with mental health disorders, providing hope to them, being a champion for my community's wellness, and advancing the knowledge of psychiatric nursing to improved practices. To achieve all these accomplishments, I will have to be part of a professional organization to get help from my peers and various institutions. The APNA will allow me to network with other nurses to enhance my professional knowledge and have interactions that will lead to positive health outcomes in my patients' lives.

The APNA provides leadership to promote and support psychiatric-mental health nurses to enhance mental health care for diverse people within the community. Additionally, this organization allows psychiatric nurses to play a significant role in shaping the policies and regulations used to guide the delivery of various mental health services. Being a member of this organization will ensure that my voice can be heard when there is a need to propagate change in psychiatric health.

Week 2 | Part 2: Strategies to Promote Academic Integrity and Professional Ethics

Introduction

           Integrity is an essential aspect of nursing. According to LaSala (2019), nurses who act professionally and have high moral integrity tend to have a strong sense of self and behave consistently with what they comprehend as good acts. Additionally, the levels of a nurse's professionalism and integrity determine the extent to which they will provide sustainable, high-quality care to patients. The values of professionalism and integrity must be initiated and nurtured when the nurse is still in school and strengthened when they begin their professional practice. In this context, this paper highlights the connection between academic and professional integrity before revealing the strategies to maintain integrity at the workplace.

Purpose statement

           I hold myself to the highest standards possible in my academic and professional environments. I believe that being a person who values integrity and professionalism has made me an excellent student and competent nurse practitioner. As I tackle my MSN program, I yearn to gain the skills and knowledge that will enable me to enhance my objective of being a nurse who delivers the highest possible care to my patients while driving the nursing profession to greater heights. In this paper, I acknowledge the importance of academic and professional integrity before reviewing the strategies I will use to maintain integrity at the workplace. This paper sets the groundwork for elevating my integrity and professionalism levels to greater heights.  

Part 1: The Connection between Academic and Professional Integrity

The correlation among academic honesty and writing is fundamental in ensuring that the work presented by a person is original and gives credit to any material used in its creation. Bertram (2017) defines academic integrity as "the commitment to and demonstration of honest and moral behavior in an academic setting" (p. 34). When writing, a person who fails to adhere to relevant academic integrity standards will carry out plagiarism or reckless writing. On the one hand, plagiarism refers to the act of a person deliberately presenting another person's work as their own without acknowledging the original author. On the other hand, reckless writing is the act of a person unintentionally presenting another person's work as their own without acknowledging the original author due to ignorance or failure to comprehend what constitutes plagiarism (Striepe, Thomson, & Sefcik, 2021). Thus, when writing and one needs to borrow ideas from another, they can either paraphrase or use direct quotes on the condition that proper acknowledgment and references will be relayed. Academic integrity ensures that writing in educational settings is professionally and ethically done.

The relationship between professional practices and scholarly ethics is also vital in ensuring that people in professional settings conduct themselves ethically and objectively. Professional courses refer to the policies, which guide individuals' conduct and behavior in professional settings. Scholarly ethics refer to the moral integrity that characterizes how one behaves or carries themselves (Striepe, Thomson, & Sefcik, 2021). A person who adheres to strong scholarly ethics will exhibit exquisite professional practices. For example, in a learning institution, academic ethics will ensure that a student does not cheat in assignments or exams. They will always produce original work and credit any sources they have utilized as required. In a place of work, one will conduct themselves as per the legal and ethical guidelines of their organization and the industry they operate in.

In this context, Grammarly and SafeAssign are two online platforms that contribute to academic integrity. SafeAssign checks a person's work and reveals any plagiarism that occurs. This ensures that one can rectify any plagiarism that was done unintentionally and credit the relevant authors of the original work. Grammarly also has a feature for checking plagiarism in a person's work. However, in addition to checking for plagiarism, Grammarly points out any grammatical mistakes that may reduce the quality of a person's work. It fits for poor sentence structure, wordiness, spelling errors, use of passive voice, use of articles, and wrong punctuations, among others (Stevens et al., 2020). Hence, one can review their work and produce polished documents that contain no plagiarism.

Part 2: Strategies for Maintaining Integrity of Work

           There are approaches, which I intend to pursue to maintain the honesty and integrity of my university work while a student of the MSN program:

1. I plan to carry out a comprehensive review of the academic guidelines of my MSN program in the university. These guidelines will reveal the acceptable and non-acceptable aspects associated with the course I am doing.

2. I plan to research how to maintain integrity and ethics in schoolwork from reputable sources. This will give me an overview of the activities that I can carry out to enhance my ability to remain professional in my schoolwork.

3. I plan to utilize online resources that enhance my work, such as SafeAssign and Grammarly. These resources will ensure that I avoid plagiarism and submit high-quality work free from errors (Stevens et al., 2020).

4. I plan to rely on the support of my peers and my professors.

Whenever I carry out an assignment, I will ensure that I gain their input into my work to ensure that I did not miss anything or fail to acknowledge the job done by others.

Additionally, there are two major strategies that I intend to pursue to maintain the integrity and ethics of my professional work as a nurse throughout my career. First, I will always ensure that I comprehensively review my workplace policies, those of professional nurses' associations, and those of the jurisdiction that I work in. these policies will guide me on the acceptable workplace standards that I should always adhere to. This will be crucial in ensuring that I attain high-performance standards and avoid legal ramifications due to carrying out unlawful practices and ensure that I enjoy high patient satisfaction and good work relationships. Second, I will adopt the philosophy of life-long learning (Berkhout et al., 2018). The nursing field is characterized by regular changes in the profession and advances that alter standards practices. Life-long learning will enable me to keep up with any relevant changes to adapt accordingly and continue operating at high standards. 

References

Berkhout, J. J., Helmich, E., Teunissen, P. W., van der Vleuten, C. P., & Jaarsma, A. D. C. (2018). Context matters when striving to promote active and lifelong learning in medical education. Medical Education, 52(1), 34-44.

Bertram G., T. (2017). Academic integrity as a teaching & learning issue: From theory to practice. Theory into Practice, 56(2), 88-94.

LaSala, C. A. (2019). Moral accountability and integrity in nursing practice. The Nursing Clinics of North America, 44(4), 423-434.

Stevens, R., Silver, L., Campbell, K., & Richards, R. (2020). A pilot study of the learning curve effect on technological safeguards used in online courses. American Journal of Management, 20(5), 9-19.

Striepe, M., Thomson, S., & Sefcik, L. (2021). Understanding academic integrity education: Case studies from two Australian Universities. Journal of Academic Ethics, 1-17.

Week 3 | Part 3: Research Analysis

Article Review

According to Mongkhon et al. (2018), non-adherence to medication is a relatively common practice, especially among patients suffering from chronic illnesses. When such patients fail to strictly stick to their prescribed medication, then they jeopardize their treatment and are likely to relapse. Consequently, it is essential that healthcare practitioners explore the various reasons why patients may fail to adhere to their medical prescriptions. A major factor behind the non-adherence to medication revolves around the side effects of drugs. There are drugs whose side effects are quite intense that they may discourage patients from continuing taking them. Therefore, healthcare practitioners ought to recognize this fact and come up with strategies to mitigate the non-adherence to medication prescriptions among patients.

Purpose Statement

This paper briefly evaluates a peer-reviewed article that explores the issue of non-adherence to medication. Specifically, the article selected focuses on how the drug side effects affect how schizophrenic and bipolar disorder patients stick to prescribed medical therapy. The purpose of the paper is to reveal a reputable and reliable source for peer-reviewed articles, which can aid healthcare students and practitioners to gain insight into common problems impacting the healthcare practice. Additionally, the paper shows how the selected article sheds light on the problem at hand.

Selected Peer-Reviewed Article

“Ata, E. E., Bahadir‐Yilmaz, E., & Bayrak, N. G. (2020). The impact of side effects on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder patients’ adherence to prescribed medical therapy. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 56(3), 691-696.”

In this article, Ata et al. (2020) reveal the results of a study they conducted on 45 schizophrenics and 47 bipolar patients. Their study explored how the side effects of antipsychotic drugs impact the participants' adherence to the prescribed treatment. Ata et al. (2020) state that “data were collected using the Medication Adherence Rating Scale (MARS) and Liverpool University Neuroleptic Side Effect Rating Scale (LUNSERS)” (p. 691). The results showed that the side effects for the bipolar disorder patients were more serve than the ones for the schizophrenic patients. Also, the results showed that most of the participants showing side effects to the drugs showed poor compliance to treatment, the higher the level of side effects, the lower the probability of the patients sticking with their treatment programs.

Database Used to Search for the Article

The article was retrieved from Google Scholar through Walden University. This database provides a free web search engine, which provides links to diverse scholarly literature from different reliable sources (Zientek et al., 2018).

Difficulties Experienced while Searching for the Article

I had no difficulties searching for the article. All I had to do was to put in keywords to locate related articles to my topic. The keywords were 'side-effects, adherence, medication, and patients.' I then reviewed a few of the results I got from the search and selected the article, which I felt was best suited for my task. The whole process took less than half an hour.

The Usefulness of the Database to My Colleagues

I believe the database will be very useful to my colleagues. They can use it not only for academic purposes but also to inform their active practice in the field. Therefore, I would recommend the database to any healthcare practitioner who is searching for scholarly literature.

References

Ata, E. E., Bahadir‐Yilmaz, E., & Bayrak, N. G. (2020). The impact of side effects on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder patients’ adherence to prescribed medical therapy. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 56(3), 691-696.

Mongkhon, P., Ashcroft, D. M., Scholfield, C. N., & Kongkaew, C. (2018). Hospital admissions associated with medication non-adherence: A systematic review of prospective observational studies. BMJ Quality & Safety, 27(11), 902-914.

Zientek, L. R., Werner, J. M., Campuzano, M. V., & Nimon, K. (2018). The use of Google Scholar for research and research dissemination. New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 30(1), 39-46.

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 6 | Part 4: 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.

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