Teaching about Legal and Ethical Issues
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
I will present the topic of Legal and Ethical issues in teaching.
Introductory
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
Legality means the act performed under government laws, while ethics deals with humans’ right and wrong behavior. In nursing, nursing educators should be able to deal with the cases of ethical and legal concerns that may arise from the student side. This presentation will provide an overview of all the ethical and legal issues of nursing educators that may work in nursing hospitals and institutions. Moreover, this presentation will also offer a possible solution to nursing educators’ legal and ethical issues. Furthermore, we will discuss about the cultural sensitive issues of FERPA along with its necessary action plans that are required for the continuum improvement of FERPA.
Legal or Ethical Issues that Require Change
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
Many nursing professionals may unintentionally violate the law by disclosing their students’ marks without permission. It is totally against the nursing education ethical code that is designed for the security of humans. To solve this issue and save the personal information of nursing students, the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) came into existence. FERPA is the federal regulation act that may allow patients to access their children’s education records. Moreover, for students under 18, their parents have complete control to view, correct, and may control the student’s records as they desire. Thus, this issue needs to be discussed to save the personal information of students.
Family Education Rights and Privacy Acts (FERPA)
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
Privacy has its significance and has a high value in America. Everyone has the right to keep their information private, and they should have complete control over sharing their personal information with others. Similarly, educational institutions only have the right to share their students’ information with others with their permission. Moreover, these institutions should not have the authority to keep a record of their students. For this purpose, Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is required, which only applies to student’s education records, such as student grades. If the information is gathered through personal observation and knowledge, this information will not be kept under the laws of FERPA. The other name of FERPA is the Buckley Amendment, which only applies to institutions that may receive federal funding from the US Department of Education. Following the laws of FERPA, educational institutes may allow sharing of their student’s information with benefactors of schools, authorizing bodies, inspection administration, education leaders, and so on.
Goal of FERPA
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
The primary purpose of designing the FERPA is to protect students’ confidential information in educational institutions. The educational institutes may share the student’s information with others, but with the permission of students or their parents. The student will choose whether they want to disclose their information. FERPA may allow sharing student information with school officials with student sponsors, legitimate academic interests, audit officials, etc.
Access to Students Records
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
Every public school and most privately funded universities must comply with FERPA. In this regard, FERPA provides full authority to students 18 years old and above to see their grades on the portal, but to students less than 18 years, their parents will have the authority to view their children’s grades and may discuss their grades with the related class teacher. University and college officials will also have the right to access students’ education records for authentic academic reasons (Alam et al., 2022). Apart from these organizations, no one has the right to review students’ confidential information. Moreover, all other parties who want to check the student’s academic knowledge will have to get permission from the students.
Consequences of Violating FERPA
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
The consequences of violating FERPA rules are severe and may lead to the temporary suspension of the access portal and potential criminal charges. The government fund will also be wasted on that organization, which may violate the rules of FERPA. Moreover, there will also be a loss of employment, and organizations will not be able to get financing from the government. It is considered the worst consequence of violating FERPA rules of regulations.
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
It can easily be understood through the following example, in which the instructor send a single email to all those students who are at risk of failing the class by using the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) feature where all the name of recipients are visible. Instead of sending the email to an individual, it is distributed to multiple students with characters who will fail the class. It violates FERPA’s protection (Jotform, 2023). So, strict action will be taken against the instructor in the form of suspension or potential criminal charges.
Nurse Educator’s Role in Upholding FERPA
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
To avoid the violation of FERPA, nurse educators must know the privacy policies for securing students’ educational records. The confidentiality of the academic record of students should be the priority for all nursing professionals. Moreover, only school officials and stakeholders should have access to this information. The higher authorities of educational institutions may use students’ knowledge to address all the problems of academic standards. School authorities may also use this data to make educated decisions for the growth of their organization. In addition, nurse educators should discuss the rules of FERPA with their new nursing students within a periodic interval of time and may discuss their advantages with them. Nurse educators should also get written permission from the students or their parents if they disclose students’ confidential information in front of any third party (DAVE WALLEN, 2020).
Resources Used for FERPA
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
Nurses and nurse educators may get information about FERPA through the US department of information state policy compliant department. The US department of education may also be considered the authoritative source for FERPA. Moreover, a complete transcript of FEPRA can easily be accessible through Digital Federal Regulation Code. Similarly, UC Resolution may also contain 130 guidelines to disclose the education record of students. In addition, all the information related to the Record Management rule at UCSB can also be considered an authoritative source for FERPA (Mougiakou et al., 2022).
Culturally Sensitive Issues in FERPA
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
Nurse educators may create a culturally sensitive environment through various opportunities such as learning about other cultures, learning to appreciate different cultures, and so on (Morris et al., 2023). Several factors may affect cultural sensitivity, such as religion, national origin, ethnicity, etc. Age, education, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation may also consider some of the main cultural sensitivity issues in FERPA. The language barrier is also one of the main cultural sensitivity issues, as people need help to provide complete information to the school’s administration at the time of student admission. The compliance process of FERPA could be more effective. FEPRA may be able to protect the family’s privacy due to the student’s academic record (Rosenberg et al., 2022).
Specific Plan for Continuous Learning
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
Continuous learning is constantly learning new skills (Hadsell et al., 2020). It may be available in different forms, from formal academic study to informal social learning. The best part of continuous learning is that people will be well aware of the modern technologies that maybe innovate worldwide (Anthonysamy et al., 2020). It helps get updated with the latest information of the study. In nursing, nurse educators may continue their learning by following their nursing leaders in doing different kinds of tasks. Continuous learning is also possible by creating a learning plan and providing the resources and time for education. It can be possible by developing a personal development plan with other employees and may discuss the complexities of nursing with them.
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
The action plans for students’ information security can only be possible with prevention systems, network mapping, access controls, vulnerability scanning, firewalls, patch management, and secure configuration (Upadhyay et al., 2020). Some knowledge gaps are also available in that, most of the time, it fails to protect student records and may disclose student information without written authorization. To eliminate this weakness, the privacy officer should implement an effective complaint tracking process, which may ensure that all the complaints regarding student information are maintained and amendments are to be made for correction.
Conclusion
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
Access to student and parent educational records is guaranteed and ensured under federal law such as FERPA. Educational institutes will only be able to share the education or confidential information of students with the written permission of students. School officials may also have the accessibility to student educational records because of making an educated decision. The people or companies who violate the laws of FERPA may have to bear severe circumstances in the form of potential criminal charges, and the government’s funding to the organization will also be closed. FERPA should also govern nurse educators, and they should also do some necessary things and not disclose the information of their nursing students. FERPA may allow universities and colleges to share their students’ data only for legitimate educational purposes. Additionally, culturally sensitive issues in FERPA are discussed in the presentation, along with its solution. Lastly, specific action plans are concerned with the continuum improvement of FERPA.
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
References
Alam, A. (2022). Platform utilizing blockchain technology for e-learning and online education for open sharing of academic proficiency and progress records. Algorithms for Intelligent Systems, 307–320.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3311-0_26
Anthonysamy, L., Koo, A. C., & Hew, S. H. (2020). Self-regulated learning strategies in higher education: Fostering digital literacy for sustainable lifelong learning. Education and Information Technologies.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10201-8
DAVE WALLEN. (2020, July 7). FERPA Compliance & How to Obtain It | Spanning Backup. Spanning.
https://spanning.com/blog/ferpa-compliance-how-to-obtain-it/
Hadsell, R., Rao, D., Rusu, A. A., & Pascanu, R. (2020). Embracing change: continual learning in deep neural networks. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 24(12), 1028–1040.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.09.004
Jotform. (2023). FERPA violation examples from a former FERPA administrator. The Jotform Blog.
https://www.jotform.com/blog/ferpa-violation-examples/
NURS FPX 6103 Assessment 5 Teaching About Legal and Ethical Issues
Morris, R., & Mims, N. (2023). Making Classrooms Culturally Sensitive.
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1436&context=eandc#:~:text=By%20creat%2D%20ing%20a%20culturally
Mougiakou, S., Vinatsella, D., Sampson, D., Papamitsiou, Z., Giannakos, M., & Ifenthaler, D. (2022). Adding value and ethical principles to educational data. Advances in Analytics for Learning and Teaching, 59–130.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15266-5_2
Rosenberg, J. M., Borchers, C., Stegenga, S. M., Burchfield, M. A., Anderson, D., & Fischer, C. (2022). How educational institutions reveal students’ personally identifiable information on Facebook. Learning, Media and Technology, 1–17.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2022.2140672
Upadhyay, D., & Sampalli, S. (2020). SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems: Vulnerability assessment and security recommendations. Computers & Security, 89, 101666.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2019.101666
