Career Research Paper: An Annotated Bibliography (Phase 2)
Canadian Family Practice Nurses Association (n.d.). Sample Role Description for Registered Nurse in Family Practice. Canadian Family Practice Nurses Association. Retrieved from https://nurseone.ca/~/media/nurseone/files/en/sample_role_description_e.pdf?la=en
This document presents an in-depth view of the role description that is to be expected in nurses in family practice. It gives general and specific overviews in matter regarding health assessment, health care management, health education, health promotion, and professional role of nurses. However, it is limited to nurses who are taking family practice and thus is not applicable to the job description of nursing in general.
Computer Programmer Salary (n.d.). Payscale. Retrieved from http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Computer_Programmer/Salary
This internet article gives a basic overview of a computer programmer. It gives the average salary in the career, the general job description of being a computer programmer, along with the duties and responsibilities that come along with the job.. In addition, it maps out the potential career paths of that job as well as the skills required in the job. However, the data used is only applicable in the United States and as such may not be relevant in other countries.
Deng, B. (1 July 2015). Machine ethics: The robot’s dilemma. Nature 523, 24-26. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com/news/machine-ethics-the-robot-s-dilemma-1.17881
This article discusses the ethical ramifications that will be utilized when dealing with artificial intelligence, a field which is within the scope of computer programmers. It discusses some issues that can be encountered when ethics is applied in the field of robotics, as the nuances of ethics regarding humans cannot be simplified within computer code. In order to address this, some programmers employ logic in decision-making as it is argued that logic forms the basis of our ethical decisions. Finally, it proposes that robots can make decisions based on experience—a tactic which is also applied by humans in problem solving and thus can mirror human ethics.
Korhonen, E.S., Nordman, T., & K. Eriksson (2015). Technology and its ethics in nursing and caring journals: An integrative literature review. Nursing Ethics 22(5), 561-576. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25335921
This journal is an integrated review of literature regarding ethics in nursing from 2000 and 2013, with a focus on technology. The journal notes that since technology is a recent subject matter, the guidelines on ethics regarding this topic are not clearly defined yet. It also presented some problems that can arise when health care is assisted by technology.
Security Analyst (n.d.). Infosec Institute. Retrieved from http://www.infosecinstitute.com/jobs/security-analyst.html
This site gives a general description of the job working as a security analyst within a company. It gives the duties that are to be performed such as developing security systems and maintaining and protecting them. In addition, it shows a projected salary for the career and gives an evaluation score compared to other jobs.
Simshaw, D. (2015). Legal Ethics and Data Security: Our Individual and Collective Obligation to Protect Client Data. American Journal of Trial Advocacy 38. Retrieved from http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=084013121017005084030094099127027109118032061048043044009117117089083117106095067092005049039026020056054098123091089127102076108057014069082019068085011071072125031057089013091012026003095100079119076084089070102106015005089082010004113089064076069125&EXT=pdf
This journal discusses the ethical practices when it comes to protecting and accessing data in today’s digital technology, particularly in law firms wherein data is highly important and as such more likely to face security threats. It stresses the importance of having ethics when it comes to protecting data of clients to ensure that information critical to the cases are kept safe. A weakness of this journal is that it focuses mostly on how data can be used in the practice of law more than in security analysis.
Phase 3: Evaluation Matrix
Phase 4 and 5
Abstract
This paper aims to evaluate three careers, two of which came from the Industrial Technology field (Computer Programming and Security Analysis) and one which comes from the Services and Welfare field (Nursing) and then come up with an article discussing the relationship of ethics an information technology when it comes to that field. First, it discusses why these three careers are specifically chosen; it gives a brief job description of the jobs and the expected roles people in the job are expected to fulfill. The computer programmers deal with using software and coding to solve problems, the security analysts protect network data, and the nurses administer health care. Next, the careers were compared side-by-side using an evaluation matrix. By using a certain set of criteria, the careers were evaluated via the following: salary, job benefits, job security, location and retirement benefits. After the evaluation, the nursing career path was determined to have the highest grade out of all the three jobs. Lastly, articles about ethical practices regarding new technology in each job were researched and analyzed. The consequences of using technology in nursing was reviewed, the ethics in Artificial Intelligence was looked into, and the importance of protecting client data was given emphasis.Since people live in a digitized technology nowadays, it was found out that there is a need to redefine ethics to include recent technological innovations.
Keywords: computer programming, security analysis, registered nursing, evaluation matrix, ethics in technological practices
Career Choices
In this assignment, we were asked to choose three careers—two must be related to Information Technology and one must be within my field. For my careers, I chose computer programmer and security analysts as the jobs pertaining to Information Technology and Registered Nurse as the career that is related to my own field.
Computer Programmer
I chose Computer Programmer because I deem it important to know how these people design and structure programs using different languages in order to comply with the different demands of people in different industries. A computer programmer is a term applied to a person who formulates computer software, as well as come up with various source codes that are designed to carry out various tasks that are needed in the career in which they are employed in. It is a computer programmer’s job to write codes and software that are used in the Information Technology sector of the company he or she works in, like in websites. It is also their job to ensure that the software that is used to serve the clients of the company works as intended. In addition, they are the ones who modify and debug source codes and visual development programs so as they function as intended as efficiently as possible. Once they have developed codes, software, and programs, it is also their duty to test and program them so that they work flawlessly and the chance of coming up with bugs that could potentially be exploited is as small as possible. Lastly, they work with fellow programmers, designers, and other information technology-related personnel to keep up with the IT standards not only in the company, but with other fields within the industry as well (“Computer Programmer Salary”, n.d.).
Knowing how programs work and designing them in a manner that fulfills certain job requirements is an interesting task and thus I would like to know more about this job. It is fascinating to learn how programs do what they are supposed to do, and knowing this information in order to tweak such programs is a skill that I would like to learn about. I understand that there are certain programs that help the computer programmer in their job, but learning how to work around the intricacies of the program is what makes the job of a computer programmer very intriguing. Being a computer programmer is very different from my choice of job as it relies on facts and logic in order to get the job done, unlike mine which relies on good interpersonal relationships and a welcoming public image. In other words, it is more suited for people who would rather work with the data than with people.
Security Analyst
My second choice is Security Analyst. As the term implies, their job is to analyze the security systems in the company, particularly their information technology security. A security analyst is someone who is in charge of protecting and maintaining the data in the companies. In order to do so, they are required to keep a check on the security systems implemented within a company. They are to improve the strengths of the security system, as well as fix any vulnerabilities to prevent security threats. In addition, they are the ones responsible for training employees to ensure that the security measures are well disseminated and executed (“Security Analyst”, n.d.). Basically, their job is to keep a watchful eye on the security network of the company. To ensure that this security is still secure, they have to collaborate with other IT professionals and the administrators to set up a security system that it is immune to vulnerabilities as possible. Furthermore, they are to conduct tests that could potentially detect any weaknesses in the network, and if any are found, they are to address those so as they do not show up again. Most importantly, they are to set up a defensive plan in case an unexpected breach of sensitive information occurs.
In this modern world, there is a great dependency on digital data and as such there is a need to protect this information and to construct measures that ensure that these are safe from any forms of outside harm. With that in mind, I chose Security Analyst as my second choice. Security analysts are crucial in companies, particularly the ones that heavily rely on information technology. When the company information is stored virtually, there is a great risk that this data will be compromised by outside threats and this results in the secrets of the company being leaked into the hands of competitors. Even worse, the company of the reputation will be irreparably ruined. To reduce the possibility of this scenario from occurring, there is a need to fortify security, particularly in networks by analyzing potential breaches, and that is where security analysts come in.
Finally, I chose the Registered Nurse from my field. It is the duty of a Registered Nurse to work hand-in-hand with doctors to deliver the best of care to the patients. They should monitor the patient’s health and recovery and cooperate with various fields in order to ensure that the utmost service will be delivered to their patients. The key duties of a registered nurse are: implement a comprehensive and focused health assessments and records them fully and objectively in standardized rules, manage health care by creating and assisting health plans and then subsequently monitoring them and making changes as possible, conduct education so that the health status and caring for the patient are optimized, advocate general well-being so as to reduce the incidences of illnesses and injury, and maintain a general sense of professionalism as a good public image is very critical when dealing with other people (Canadian Family Nurses Association, n.d.).
I chose this field because as someone who works in delivering service to the community, I see the field of being a Registered Nurse to be worth investigating about. Unlike the other two careers above, being a registered nurse is evidence-based; nurses rely more on their experience and accumulated skills in order to deliver optimum service to the customers (patients) rather than tackling the issues presented to them using logic and background knowledge. Moreover, being a nurse is connoted with being working with many people rather than with data. People are more complex and more subjective compared with data which is more uniform. Therefore, being a registered nurse is more suited for the people who like to work with other people and like to meet with many persons and learn from their experiences.
Career Evaluation
For the career evaluation part, an evaluation matrix was made in order to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each job. The evaluation matrix constructed is shown below:
For the criteria, I chose the following: salary, job benefits, job benefits, job location, job security, and retirement benefits that each job has to offer. Each criteria was given a weight based on its importance, and the jobs themselves were given a score based on the evaluation of the job in terms of that criteria. The score was then multiplied on the respective criteria and then added to give the overall score assigned for each job.
Salary
Salary is one of the main goals of being involved in a career. One invests time, skills and resources in order to get income for a career. Obviously, people want to get an income that is at least proportional to the amount of work they put in; no one wants to work hard for a job and receive a measly compensation in return. With this in mind, salary becomes one of the components to assess the three careers—looking at the mean salary offered by the jobs can give some insight on the advantages the job has. The salary has a weight of 25% as its importance in choosing a career is relatively crucial.
According to the PayScale website, a computer programmer can earn a median of $53,000 a year, with the lower limit of $35000 a year and an upper limit of up to $92,000 a year. These figures can be considered respectable enough as they are slightly above the average salary of $51,000 a year. The same is true for nurses—they get an average salary of about $53,000 according to the same website. Therefore, I give the two careers roughly equal scores. As for the security analyst, the Infosec Institute website lists the average salary of a security analyst to be that of $85000. Since system analyst gives higher salary—far higher than the other two careers, it receives a far higher score.
Job Benefits
As for job benefits, I included such factors such as availability of the job (whether there are companies recruiting for people in that career), flexibility (if that career offers a lot of opportunities and growth during its course), and potential advantages such as paid leaves and club memberships that can be gained when choosing the job. The benefits gained from choosing a job are important as it makes the employees feel enjoyed, satisfied, and secure with their current job. Thus, it increases their overall performance and productivity.
All three have different benefits to offer, so they all have more or less the same score. For example, there is always a demand for the three jobs—there are always companies looking for security analysts and computer programmers, and there is never a shortage of nurses in the health care industry. However, computer programmers and security analysts get to enjoy the benefits that can only be gained when working in a specific company, such as paid leaves, premium memberships, holiday bonuses, and the like. On the other hand, nurses have a wonderful retirement plan and they get to enjoy interaction with a large number of people so the advantages in both companies can be considered roughly equal. The same goes for job location—all three are equally available in my vicinity, where health care and companies that focus on information technology can be readily found. Because of this, I gave them all an equal score when it comes to that criterion.
Stability and Growth
The next category concerns stability and growth, which can be considered important as well because getting ahead in the career is considered an improvement. Aside from the salary, the stability of the job is a major factor in choosing a career since it ensures that a person will be employed in a satisfactory amount of time. A potential for growth should also be considered—if someone is stuck in a dead-end job then there would be no opportunities for improvement, experience and salary raise.
Since computer programmers can be involved in a variety of jobs, it gets a high score. Security analysts can be considered stable, but there is not much room for improvement in that career compared to the myriad of opportunities available as a computer programmer. Lastly, while a nurse can proceed up to becoming a head nurse, the job does not offer much when it comes to the health care industry. For one, a nurse cannot become a doctor or a medical practitioner unless they take a course that allows them to pursue that career path. Therefore, I placed a high score for programmer when it comes to this criterion.
Retirement Benefits
Lastly, I factored retirement benefits for each job. Having a good retirement plan ensures that an individual can live a comfortable life even when past the age that he or she is physically unable to work any longer. As mentioned earlier, the career a nursing offers an ample retirement benefit plan, so I gave it a higher score overall. The computer programmer and the security analyst careers may offer a plan as well, but theirs is less favorable compared to that of the nursing career.
Overall Evaluation
As seen from the above evaluation, it can be seen that the nursing career is more beneficial—at least from my point of view. While it is more or less equal in terms of other benefits, the retirement plan in that career is what makes it stand out from the other two.
Ethical Issues in Careers
The last part of the career involves ethical practice related to technologies in each career. This is a relevant topic in the modern ages as in this world where everything can be done digitally, there are no hard-cut ethics for the practices regarding technology. If there are any, they are not firmly established throughout the years as they are still relatively new compared to ethics regarding other points in the career. Ethics can be defined by the collective of the point of views and moralities of authorities and experts regarding a certain field. However, the values of today’s society are changing nowadays and by extension the ethical practices regarding careers are also being redefined as well. This is truer in technology as some aspects in using technological devices can be a bit nuanced regarding their values in morality and appropriateness. Some of the ethical practices that are concerned with technology for each certain career will be described below.
Nursing Ethics: Use of Technology in Nursing
For the nursing career, I looked into ethical practices regarding the use of modern technology and the like and how they can affect the ethics of the nursing profession in general. For example, is it ethical to use modern devices to assist patients when they themselves are unwilling to use technology? Situations like these present a dilemma: it is the responsibility of the nurses to help the patient in a way comfortable to them, but it is also their job to give the best health care for them as well. On one hand, the nurses have to give the patient a care that that is appropriate. In this case, they must limit the use of technology when taking care of some patients. However, while the solution looks simple theoretically, it is harder to carry out as many nursing practices today require some sort of technological device. The dilemma is compounded when sometimes the only way to give the best quality care is by technology.
Korhonen, Nordman, and Eriksson (2015) stated the reason behind this is that the relationship between technology and ethics has no clear-cut definition as of now, and thus more research is needed regarding that matter. In their journal, they reviewed many literatures that discuss the relationship between ethics and the use of technological devices in health care. They found out that some studies completely disregard the ethical ramifications of using technology, others cite technology as a way to improve both nursing practices and ethics, and the rest poses problems regarding technology and ethics. They summarized their review by acknowledging that technology can take on many meanings in the realm of health care, and thus the relationship between ethics and technology cannot be clearly defined as of now.
Programming Ethics: Simulating Ethics in AI
An ethical issue in computer programming can be seen in developing ethics related to artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence can be seen as related to computer programming as the ones who develop algorithms for the robots are computer programmers themselves. Programming ethics in robots can be difficult because the principles relating to ethics is complicated and employ many factors that are only understandable by the human mind; ethics cannot be simply summarized by a few lines of code. However, given the capabilities of technology today, there are certain things that can be done in order to at least stimulate it.
In order to make up for such situations, Deng (2015) suggested two solutions: use logic because it is the basis for most ethical decisions made, or employ an experience program so that the robot will make decisions based on previous outcomes. By simulating what humans do when faced with situations that require ethics, the computer can come up with solutions that can simulate human thinking combined with ethical ideas. He admitted that there is still a long way to go regarding simulation of reality by artificial intelligence, and therefore more focus is needed on this matter.
Security Analysis Ethics: Protecting Client Data
The last ethical issue is related with systems analyst and concerns the security of the information that the analysts are trying to protect. As to the nursing ethics, there is a need to define the ethical standards involved in protecting crucial information in order to keep up the trust provided by the clients and the company. The journal by Simshaw (2015) supports this—his article discusses at length the importance of protecting confidential data and the ethics in doing so. This journal is more focused on the legal aspect of protecting data; here he stresses that keeping data confidential is important in the world of law as it both upholds the reputation of client and practitioner alike, and it serves as a bond of trust. As always, he notes that there are some situations wherein ethics seem like a gray area, but he employs both logic and values to tackle those. He concludes that in the modern world, there is even a greater need to protect virtual data and even the act itself is a question of ethics in general.
In all these three journals, it is a common conclusion that there is a need to redefine ethics when it comes to technological practices. This is because the technology is relatively new and its ramifications regarding the practice of ethics has not been fully understood yet.
Conclusion
In this paper, three careers were taken into consideration: computer programming, an IT-related field that deals with codes and software, systems analyst, a career that involves taking care of network security systems, and nursing, a health care career that serves as assistance to doctors and practitioners. These three were evaluated regarding certain criteria like salary, job location, job benefits, stability and growth, and retirement plan using an evaluation matrix. After a thorough analysis, it was found out that nursing ranks the highest among the three based on my opinion.
Lastly, journals that discuss technological practices on each of the three careers were thoroughly discussed. For nursing, the use of technology in health care was discussed. In programming, the possibility of using ethics in AI was explored. Lastly, the ethics in protecting client data, a realm of security analysis, was given focus. Based on the journals, it can be said that the realm of technology in ethics does not have full-defined standards yet and more research needs to be conducted regarding it.
References
Canadian Family Practice Nurses Association (n.d.). Sample Role Description for Registered Nurse in Family Practice. Canadian Family Practice Nurses Association. Retrieved from https://nurseone.ca/~/media/nurseone/files/en/sample_role_description_e.pdf?la=en
Computer Programmer Salary (n.d.). Payscale. Retrieved from http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Computer_Programmer/Salary
Deng, B. (1 July 2015). Machine ethics: The robot’s dilemma. Nature 523, 24-26. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com/news/machine-ethics-the-robot-s-dilemma-1.17881
Korhonen, E.S., Nordman, T., & K. Eriksson (2015). Technology and its ethics in nursing and caring journals: An integrative literature review. Nursing Ethics 22(5), 561-576. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25335921
Security Analyst (n.d.). Infosec Institute. Retrieved from http://www.infosecinstitute.com/jobs/security-analyst.html
Simshaw, D. (2015). Legal Ethics and Data Security: Our Individual and Collective Obligation to Protect Client Data. American Journal of Trial Advocacy 38. Retrieved from http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=084013121017005084030094099127027109118032061048043044009117117089083117106095067092005049039026020056054098123091089127102076108057014069082019068085011071072125031057089013091012026003095100079119076084089070102106015005089082010004113089064076069125&EXT=pdf
