PICO(T) Questions and an Evidence-Based Approach
Create a 3-5 page submission in which you develop a PICO(T) question for a specific care issue and evaluate the evidence you locate, which could help to answer the question.
Scenario
For this assessment, please use a health care issue of interest from your current or past nursing practice.
If you do not have an issue of interest from your personal nursing practice, then review the optional Case Studies presented in the resources and select one of those as the basis for your assessment.
• Define a practice issue to be explored via a PICO(T) approach. Create a PICO(T)-formatted research question
• Identify sources of evidence that could be potentially effective in answering a PICO(T) question (databases, journals, websites, etc.).
• Explain the findings from articles or other sources of evidence as it relates to the identified health care issue.
• Explain the relevance of the findings from chosen sources of evidence to making decision related to a PICO(T) question.
• Communicate using writing that is clear, logical, and professional with correct grammar and spelling using the current APA style.
Sample Solution
Regardless of what model of evidence-based decision-making and practice is selected, Step #1 in the EBP process is to ask the burning clinical question in PICOT format. As an early and critical step in the EBP process, it is remarkable to discover how often PICOT questions are incorrectly written. The purpose of a PICOT question is simple: It is the mechanism to identify the terms to be used to search for the best evidence to answer a burning clinical question. In other words, the PICOT question is the search strategy. The search strategy leads to an unbiased and effective search. The unbiased and effective search leads to the evidence. The evidence answers the question and underpins the evidence-based recommendation, decision, or practice. Instead of uncovering hundreds of studies, most of which do not answer the clinical question because of a poorly designed PICOT question, use of a correctly formed PICOT question when conducting a search allows for a small number of relevant studies to be discovered to answer the question.
