For example, patients with weakened immune symptoms might be more likely to catch such an infection. To minimize the risk of other patient variables interfering with the data, the nurses whose hand-washing methods would be subject to study would be chosen from the wider sampling at random, with the controls upon the extreme cases cited above. The nurses would be identified as frequent or low-frequency hand-washers, depending on how much or how often they washed their hands during patient treatment, after, and before. The number of nosocomial infections in the patients they cared for would likewise be tracked, and thus extent to which frequent hand-washing could prevent the spread of infectious agents that give rise to such antibiotic-resistant complaints would be discerned by tracking the correlation between infection and amount of hand-washing used by the nurse. The advantage of using a video observance and tracking methodology to obtain the random sampling would be in part to note what other precautions were observed by nurses, to see if these precautions should also be controlled for in the data analysis. Other precautions include the fact that nurses should avoid direct contact with patients, and patient body fluids, should wear barriers such as gloves when contact is necessary or expected with patients, should avoid at all costs the nurse's exposure to sharp instruments, especially body fluid-contaminated sharp instruments, and should not expose their own skin to patients with exposed body fluids, or "weeping wounds" (Abedon, 1998).

Because video surveillance techniques were used, however,...

Even if nurses did not obey all of the official sanitary precautions as observed on the videotape, they would need to know that the results would not be transmitted to their immediate superiors, although they would be informed of the results, with an eye upon educating members of the ward and improving their patient care. Ultimately, the purpose of research is to ensure, in the word of the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics that "the nurse participates in activities that contribute to the ongoing development of the profession's body of knowledge," and in the interests of this ethical code, the subject's anonymous status must be upheld. Additionally, the nurses being observed as well as the patients and other health care providers on the ward that day would be made aware that they were being observed, both beforehand with a memo, and through a sign posted in the ward that recording was taking place.
Works Cited

Abedon, Stephen. (5 Sept 1998). "Nosocomial infections." Retrieved 26 Jan 2008 at http://mansfield.osu.edu/~sabedon/biol2053.htm

American Nurses Association: Code of ethics." (2008). ANA. Retrieved 26 Jan 2008 at http://www.med.howard.edu/ethics/handouts/american_nurses_association_code.ht

Lane, David. (2007). "Random sampling." HyperStat. Retrieved 26 Jan 2008 at http://davidmlane.com/hyperstat/A35563.html

Mori, Ipos. (2004). "Quantitative research." Retrieved 26 Jan 2008 at http://www.ipsos-mori.com/quantitative