Promoting integrity in the workplace: a priority for all academic health professionals.

The performance-driven culture of universities challenges faculty to meet workplace expectations. In this paper, we draw on the literature to identify key aspects of, and requirements for, promoting integrity in the academic workplace. Integrity is a crucial personal characteristic that can exert a powerful influence in any setting. Any threat to integrity in the workplace can result in a toxic and corrupt environment that may be deleterious to faculty and students. Such an environment can act to prevent faculty from speaking up about ethical issues or workplace concerns, which can result in failure to identify areas for improvement, continuation of suboptimal practices, and problematic professional relationships. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to present an overview of the concept of integrity in the academic workforce and to discuss some of the issues and dimensions, in the hope of creating greater awareness. This is essential if health professional faculties are to recruit and retain staff and create optimal working environments conducive to facilitating high quality outcomes.

A good day in nursing: views of recent Singaporean graduates.

This paper arises from the analysis of data from a large Singapore-based survey and a complementary qualitative series of 17 individual interviews. Some results from both arms of the research have been previously analysed and are reported elsewhere. Answers to a series of questions within the questionnaire and the structured interviews have been drawn together under the umbrella of investigating of recent Singaporean graduates' views about the characteristics of a good nurse, a good day at work, and how they uphold ethical standards. Overall five themes emerged, these are: caring for others; respectful interpersonal interaction; rational clinical decision-making; the harsh reality of the workplace; and personal qualities (not easily influenced by formal education). Interviewees believed that potential nursing students should be made aware of the harsh realities they will face on graduation, which may seem counter-intuitive. However, graduates recalled their own struggles and perseverance and toughness to simply survive the early months as a key component of transition shock, indicating that an earlier awareness may be beneficial.

Integrity and mental health nursing: factors to consider.

Integrity is interpreted as a holistic phenomenon that incorporates personal characteristics, cognition, interpersonal awareness, and practical enactment-ultimately relating to matters society deems worthwhile. This approach enables integrity to be understood as both a personal morality and a social (group) morality. Mental health nurses embedded in a hierarchical bureaucratic organisation may act according to their personal morality and display moral strength in many situations; however, if the social morality of the group is at variance with their convictions, as individuals their capacity to be courageous and enact integrity will be tested. A likely consequence will be that those with the most cherished positive patient care values, those with a stronger adherence to moral convictions about the public good, and those with a clearly developed understanding of integrity parameters will depart, and possibly leave the profession. In this article, we provide an overview of the structural and contextual realities of nursing work within organisations and discuss how these factors can compromise whole unit integrity and seriously challenge mental health nurses' commitment to enacting integrity. In the final section of this article, broad suggestions for strengthening individual and group integrity are provided.