Without a well-focused question, it could be difficult and time-consuming to identify appropriate resources and search for relevant evidence. Practitioners of Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) use a specialized model framework, called PICO, to form the question and facilitate the literature search1.
| P | Patient, Population, or Problem | How would I describe a group of patients similar to mine? |
| I | Intervention, Prognostic Factor, or Exposure | Which main intervention, prognostic factor, or exposure am I considering? |
| C | Comparison or Intervention (if appropriate) | What is the main alternative to compare with the intervention? |
| O | Outcome you would like to measure or achieve | What can I hope to accomplish, measure, improve, or affect? |
| What Type of question are you asking? | Diagnosis, Etiology/Harm, Therapy, Prognosis, Prevention | |
| Type of Study you want to find | What would be the best study design/methodology? |
The example PICO worksheet and tool below help you practice the formulation of clinical questions.
Schardt, C., Adams, M. B., Owens, T., Keitz, S. and Fontelo, P., Utilization of the PICO framework to improve searching PubMed for clinical questions, BMC medical informatics and decision making, 2007, 7(1):16. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1472-6947-7-16
Evidence, S. m. t., How to Use the PICO Method to Form a Clinical Question - YouTube, 2015. https://youtu.be/D3IS1cV-tLQ
