| Course | NR 395 Ethics, Integrity, and Professional Nursing Trends |
|---|---|
| Week | 7 |
| Paper type | Professional issue analysis |
| Length | About 1,120 words, 5 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | RN-to-BSN |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NR 395 Week 7
Professional Issue Analysis: Why Bullying of New Graduate Nurses Survives Every Zero-Tolerance Policy, and a Proposal With a Price
Student Name
College of Nursing, Chamberlain University
NR 395: Ethics, Integrity, and Professional Nursing Trends
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Professional Issue Analysis: Why Bullying of New Graduate Nurses Survives Every Zero-Tolerance Policy, and a Proposal With a Price
The Issue, as a Shift Feels It
Bullying of new nurses rarely looks like shouting. On most units it looks like smaller things that are hard to report. A new graduate asks a question at the station and is answered with a sigh and "You should know that by now." She is given the heaviest assignment three nights in a row and told it is "good experience." Her charting is corrected in front of a physician rather than privately. Her requests for help with a turn are met with "I'm busy" by nurses who are not busy. When she makes a mistake, it is discussed at the next shift change before she has heard about it herself. None of these acts would, on its own, justify a formal complaint. Together, over weeks, they tell a new nurse that she does not belong.
The phrase "nurses eat their young" has been repeated for decades, usually with a shrug. This paper argues that the shrug is the problem: the issue has survived because the profession has learned to file it under initiation rather than as a patient safety and workforce problem.
Why It Survives
Three features let bullying outlast the policies written against it. First, most of it falls below the threshold of a reportable event. A zero-tolerance policy that requires a formal complaint does nothing about a sigh, an unfair assignment or a refused request for help. Second, the people who report are the least powerful people on the unit. A new graduate on a probationary period, whose evaluation is written partly by the senior nurses she would be reporting, has every reason to stay quiet. Third, the behavior is often done by nurses who are themselves overstretched, which makes managers reluctant to confront them in a staffing shortage.
Laschinger et al. (2010), studying 415 new graduate nurses in acute care hospitals in Ontario, found that exposure to workplace bullying was significantly related to all three components of burnout: emotional exhaustion, cynicism and reduced sense of efficacy. They also found that nurses with greater structural empowerment, meaning access to information, support, resources and opportunity at work, reported less exposure to bullying. That second finding matters. It suggests that bullying is not only a matter of individual bad behavior but of how the work environment distributes power and support.
Right, Not Merely Permitted
It is not enough to say that a hospital is permitted to address bullying. It is obligated to. Provision 6 gives nurses an individual and a shared duty to build and improve the ethical environment of the work setting, one that affects both nursing care and the well-being of nurses (American Nurses Association [ANA], 2025). A unit where new nurses learn to stop asking questions is a unit where patients receive care from nurses who are afraid to check what they do not know. The ethical case and the safety case point the same way.
The obligation also runs between nurses, not only from hospitals to nurses. The senior nurse who sighs at a question is not a villain; that nurse was probably treated the same way and survived it. But the code does not ask whether a behavior was survivable. It asks whether the environment supports good care and the well-being of the people giving it. A norm that each generation of nurses passes on because it was passed to them fails that test, and every nurse who notices it has a part in ending it, whether by answering the question kindly, by speaking up when a colleague is refused help, or by asking the charge nurse why the same new graduate has the heaviest assignment again.
What Has Already Failed
Most hospitals already have a code of conduct and a zero-tolerance statement. Most have also run civility training at some point. These have failed even though they are right in principle, because they rely on reporting and on one-time education. They do nothing for the behaviors that fall below reporting thresholds, and they do not change who holds power over a new nurse's evaluation. Posters about respect in the break room do not protect a new graduate who is given the heaviest assignment every night by the same charge nurse.
A Proposal With a Price Tag
The proposal is specific to the first year of practice. Every new graduate on a medical-surgical unit would have a designated support nurse who is not their preceptor, not their manager and not involved in their evaluation, ideally from another unit, with protected time of one hour every two weeks for a private conversation. The support nurse would be trained to recognize patterns of bullying from small incidents, and would have a direct line to the nurse manager and the professional practice council to raise patterns without naming the new graduate unless the new graduate agrees. The unit's assignment sheets for the first six months would also be reviewed monthly by the manager for fairness in the distribution of the heaviest assignments.
The price is real. One hour every two weeks for each new graduate, on a unit that hires eight new graduates a year, is about 200 hours of experienced nurse time annually, plus training. Reviewing assignments takes the manager's time. Some senior nurses will resent the scrutiny. The case for paying it is that, if the proposal prevents even one new graduate from leaving in the first year, the savings in recruitment and orientation are likely to exceed its cost, and the unit keeps a nurse it has already trained.
What the Proposal Does Not Fix
The proposal does not change the conditions that make experienced nurses short-tempered: understaffing, heavy assignments and little time to teach. It treats the symptom closest to the new nurse, not the cause. A more ambitious proposal would reduce preceptors' patient loads, which costs more and is harder to win. I have chosen the smaller proposal because it is one a unit could adopt next quarter and measure within a year, and because protecting the people most likely to leave is the part of the problem a single unit can reach.
Its success would be measured in two numbers the unit already collects: first-year turnover of new graduates, and the proportion of exit interviews that mention how colleagues treated them. If neither moves after a year, the proposal should be dropped or replaced.
References
American Nurses Association. (2025). Code of ethics for nurses. https://codeofethics.ana.org/
Laschinger, H. K. S., Grau, A. L., Finegan, J., & Wilk, P. (2010). New graduate nurses' experiences of bullying and burnout in hospital settings. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 66(12), 2732-2742. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2010.05420.x
What the NR 395 Week 7 assignment asks for
The Week 7 analysis asks you to examine a professional issue affecting nurses and recommend a response. Expect to cover the issue itself, its causes, its effects, the ethical obligations involved, past attempts to address it, a specific recommendation and APA references. Describe the issue as it happens on a shift, with behaviors a reader would recognize. Explain why it has survived previous attempts to fix it. Use evidence to show the harm. Argue from the Code that action is required. Say what has failed and why. Propose something specific, with who acts, when and at what cost. Name what your proposal does not fix and how success would be measured.
How the NR 395 Week 7 example is put together
The first section describes questions answered with a sigh, help withheld and the heaviest assignments given to the newest nurse, then argues that the profession's shrug is the problem. The next section names three reasons the behavior survives, starting with incidents too small to report, and cites Laschinger and colleagues on bullying and all three parts of burnout. The ethics section uses Provision 6 and notes that the senior nurse who sighs was probably treated the same way. The failures section covers codes of conduct and civility training. The proposal assigns each new graduate a support nurse outside the evaluation chain, one hour every two weeks, with monthly reviews of assignments. Costs, limits and two measures, first-year turnover and exit interviews, finish the paper.
Reading the NR 395 Week 7 grading rubric
Professional issue rubrics typically score the description of the issue, analysis of causes, use of evidence, ethical reasoning, a feasible recommendation, evaluation and APA. The recommendation is where this paper wins most, because it names who acts, how often and at what price. The description row is credited for specific behaviors rather than general statements. Analysis of causes scores through three reasons the issue survives policy. Evidence earns points through Laschinger and colleagues' study. Ethical reasoning is credited when Provision 6 makes action an obligation. Naming what the proposal does not fix, and measuring success with numbers the unit already collects, shows the realism graders look for.
Common NR 395 Week 7 mistakes, and how to avoid them
The heaviest loss on this paper is pure description, an accurate portrait of the problem with no claim about what should follow. Another is a recommendation for awareness or training, which the paper itself shows has already failed. Students also blame individual senior nurses, which ignores how the behavior is passed on, or propose solutions with no cost. Writing about your own workplace is allowed with details changed. This paper differs from the earlier position paper because it ends in a proposal rather than a stance. Recommendations should be realistic for one unit. If your issue is different, such as unsafe staffing, describe it and an NR 395 issue analysis can be built toward a priced proposal.
Get a NR 395 Week 7 example written to your instructions
Send the prompt and rubric from your classroom, the issue you want examined, and any required page or source count. A custom example is written to your instructions and returned inside 24-48h, the first one free. It comes back with a recommendation aimed at a named decision maker rather than at the profession generally.
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NR 395 Week 7 questions, answered
Can I write about something happening at my own workplace?
Usually yes, and it makes the paper better, but the employer stays unnamed and so does anyone involved. Describe the unit by size and type, keep dates vague, and remove anything that would let a reader identify the place. What survives is the pattern, which is the part the analysis needs. The details that identify a facility add nothing to the argument.
How is this different from the position paper earlier in the session?
The position paper argues a contested question where nurses already disagree. This one starts from a condition most nurses would call bad and asks why it continues and what should be done. The reasoning is closer to diagnosis than to debate, and the marks sit in the explanation of why the problem is stable rather than in the strength of a thesis.
Does the recommendation have to be realistic?
It has to be answerable by somebody. A proposal that requires federal legislation is fine if the paper says who introduces it and what stands in the way. What loses marks is the recommendation floating free of any actor, and the one that assumes goodwill will cover the gap, since goodwill is what has been covering it all along.
Where can I find a free NR 395 Week 7 sample paper?
This page shows the full Week 7 analysis of new graduate bullying, with the shift-level description, three reasons it survives, the ethical argument, the priced support nurse proposal, its limits and two references.
What does the proposal in the NR 395 Week 7 paper cost?
About 200 hours of experienced nurse time a year on a unit hiring eight new graduates, at one hour every two weeks each, plus training and monthly assignment reviews by the manager.