Evidence-Based Practice

To search for evidence-based information, you first need to develop a well-formed clinical question. The PICO search framework can help you do this.

PICO stands for:

   Patient, Population or Problem
           What are the characteristics of the patient or population?
           What is the condition or disease you are interested in?

   Intervention or exposure
           What do you want to do with this patient (e.g. treat, diagnose, observe)?

   Comparison
           What is the alternative to the intervention (e.g. placebo, different drug, surgery)?

   Outcome
           What are the relevant outcomes (e.g. morbidity, death, complications)?

See an example in the right hand box.

Look at these: 

• Create a PICO question [developed by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA)]
• Create a Search String based on a PICO [ASHA]
• Track your results [ASHA]
• Sample PICO worksheet [Alverno College Library]
• Clinical examples using PICO [NSW Health's Clinical Information Access Portal]

Once you have established your focused clinical question, you then need to convert it into an effective search strategy. This involves identifying:

• Keywords or synonyms
• Type of study
• Which database/s to search