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Nursing

What does PICO Stand For:

PICO Chart detailing P=Patient, Population or Problem, I=Intervention or Exposure, C=Comparison and O=Outcome. Sample questions are shown.

PICO Chart created by Reynolds Libraries (pdf)

What does PICO mean?

The first stage of any evidence-based practice process is formulating an answerable question. This forms the foundation for quality searching. A well-formulated question will facilitate the search for evidence and will assist you in determining whether the evidence is relevant to your question.

PICO: A Model for Evidence Based Research created by Binghamton University Libraries (YouTube video)

Forming a PICO question?

This tutorial discusses background and foreground questions and how to convert a clinical scenario into a PICO foreground question.


Developing answerable clinical questions created by Terry Shaneyfelt, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (YouTube video).

Search the Literature

Do a limited literature search using your identified PROBLEM/PATIENT/POPULATION and your INTERVENTION using these:

CINAHL Complete (a Reynolds Library Database)

 

UpToDate (a Reynolds Library Database)

www.Cochrane.org (a website that gathers and summarizes the best evidence from research to help you make informed choices about treatment)