UToledo DNP Student Library Research Hub

1. Develop Your PICOT Question

• A well-formulated, clear, and focused question is the key to a strong literature review
• Your question will efficiently guide your search for evidence
• The PICOT framework can be used to create a searchable question
• Concepts from your PICOT question will be used to generate search terms for finding literature 

2. Plan the Search

• Prior to searching, it is essential to have a plan in place
• Map out your search terms using the PICOT Search Strategy Worksheet. List the main concepts of your PICOT question along with corresponding synonyms. Use a thesaurus to brainstorm relevant synonyms or related terms.  
• Conduct an initial "exploratory" search in a library database. Observe any relevant terminology within the search results. Notice patterns and trends in the language or nomenclature of key concepts. Add any new terms to your PICOT Search Strategy Worksheet, and refine your search strategy accordingly.

3. Implement the Search

• Searching across several databases helps facilitate a comprehensive review of the literature 
• Select relevant library databases to conduct your literature search in (3-5 databases is a good starting point)
• Search one database at a time
• You may need to adjust your search terms or search strategy from database to database

4. Organize Your References

• Take advantage of software tools such as EndNote to manage and organize your literature references 
• You can automatically import references from a database search into EndNote software
• EndNote can also be used to help you format manuscript citations and references 
• EndNote is free to download for all UToledo students. Learn more here: http://libguides.utoledo.edu/endnote 

5. Synthesize

• Synthesis involves bringing together the key findings from your literature review 
• A synthesis of findings for a DNP-level literature review often involves:
  • 1) writing your synthesized findings in a narrative format and
  • 2) condensing the key findings of each study/research article into an evidence synthesis table
• For additional guidance, see the Evidence Table tab

• Baker, J. D. (2016). The purpose, process, and methods of writing a literature review. AORN Journal, 103(3), 265–269. 
• Bowden, V. R. (2022). Types of reviews - Part 3: Literature review, integrative review, scoping review. Pediatric Nursing, 48(2), 97–100. (Refer to the Literature Review section on pp. 97-98)
• Fineout-Overholt E., Melnyk B.M., Stillwell S.B., & Williamson K.M. (2010). The process of synthesis: Seeing similarities and differences across the body of evidence. American Journal of Nursing, 110(11), 43–51 (Although this article was published over ten years ago in 2010, it is widely recognized as a classic resource on evidence synthesis. The principles are timeless and applicable in today's EBP environment. This article provides a good example of an evidence synthesis table.)
• Sutton, A., Clowes, M., Preston, L., & Booth, A. (2019). Meeting the review family: Exploring review types and associated information retrieval requirements. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 36(3), 202–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12276 (Refer to Table 3 on pp. 206-10 for helpful descriptions of various review types)
• Wakefield, A. (2015). Synthesising the literature as part of a literature review. Nursing Standard, 29(29), 44–51.