NURS 3030: Evidence-Based Practice in Nursing

Asking questions is at the heart of evidence-based practice.

If nurses never asked questions about how to improve patient care based on scientific research evidence, then no beneficial changes or advancements in nursing practice would occur. Cultivating a spirit of inquiry is essential for evidence-based practice implementation.

The PICOT model is used widely in evidence-based practice to construct a focused, well-built, and searchable clinical question. 

It consists of the following components:

P (Patient/Population/Problem)

I (Intervention)

C (Comparison – “usual care” or “standard care”)

O (Outcome/s)

T (Timeframe)

The PICOT template for constructing clinical questions is as follows:

In ________ (P), what is the effect of  ________ (I) compared with ________ (C) on ________ (O) within ________ (T)?

PICOT Question Example: 

In community-dwelling older adults (P), what is the effect of social support (I) compared with usual care (C) on loneliness and isolation (O) within the lifespan (T)?

Building a Database Search Strategy for the PICOT Question: 

• A well-built PICOT question forms the basis of a database search strategy for finding research literature.
• Concepts from the PICOT question are used to construct a comprehensive database search strategy with search terms describing each relevant component of the PICOT. 
• Relevant elements of your PICOT question can be used to develop an initial list of keywords (including synonyms) to use in a database search. The most important parts of a PICOT question for searching are the P, I, and O. 
• After developing a list of search terms, you can then begin brainstorming your search strategy for combining terms with OR or AND (this is called Boolean logic), and using other techniques such as truncation (i.e. a keyword search for elder* will find articles with the term elder, elders, or elderly) or quotes (i.e. a keyword search for "older adult*" will find articles with that exact phrase)
• IMPORTANT: See Search Terms & Search Strategy for details, explanations, and examples.