Tips for Clinical Questions
If you are trying to define a good clinical foreground for a research question, try using PICO!
- Population/Patient/Problem -> "Among family-members of patients with early-onset dementia"
- Intervention (cause/prognosis) -> "does listening to tranquil music"
- Comparison [optional] -> "as opposed to not listening to tranquil music"
- Outcome -> "make a difference in the reduction of reported anxiety?"
Using PICO also helps you structure your database searches. Some nursing databases, such as CINAHL, even give you the option to search using the PICO formula!
When you go to search the databases, you may not need/want to use all the terms in your search.
- If you retrieve too many results, add more terms to your search, or add more specific terms.
- If you retrieve too few results, use fewer or more broad terms.
TIP: Sometimes you'll see the acronym as PICOT (T = Time). You can usually ignore the 'T'.
