Question

Write a 2-3-page paper addressing the following:

• Background of a clinical practice problem or educational problem related to your practice.
• The PICO(T) format is used to organize research evidence to address clinical problems. You will use the PICO(T) question to identify relevant studies needed to develop evidenced based practice or best practices in nursing education.

Answer 1

Answer

(PICO)T Format

PICOT is an acronym to formulate a clinical question and it acts as a guide to search for evidence. This format aids in finding the best evidence available in a more efficient manner. The PICO process is a mnemonic used in evidence based practice to frame and answer a clinical or health care related question. It is also applicable in nursing research. This framework is also used to develop literature search strategies, for instance in systematic reviews.

It helps nurses in summarizing research questions that explore the effect of therapy:

1. Population refers to the sample of subjects you wish to recruit for your study. It defines your sample which is most likely to respond to your interventions. It helps you to find out the target population upon whom results can be generalized.
2. Intervention refers to the treatment that will be provided to subjects enrolled in your study. It includes nursing interventions planned for experiment group selected under the study.
3. Comparison means comparing the effect of interventions between control group and experimental group. There should always be a control or reference group.
4. Outcome represents what result you plan on measuring to examine the effectiveness of your intervention.
5. Time describes the duration for your data collection.

P-Patient/Problem
I-Intervention
C-Comparison
O-Outcome

T-Time

Many nurses find that it helps them clarify their question, which in turn makes it easier to find an answer. Use PICO to generate terms - these you'll use in your literature search for the current best evidence.  

Example:

Start with a vague question u wish to be answered. "How effective is CPR, really?"

But, what do we mean by CPR?

And how do we define effective?

PICO is a technique which help us or force us to answer these questions. For this question we can generate a PICO format in following way,

P - Consider the respective population to be searched according to our question. So, ask yourself questions such as, Am I interested in A specific age cohort? (Adults, children, aged) A specific population (hospitalized, community dwelling) A health cohort (healthy, diabetic, etc.)    I – We might specify an intervention such as 'hands-only'. C - Is there another method of CPR that we want to compare the hands-only to?   In this example we might want to compare to the standard, hands plus breathing. O - We need to ask, what do we mean by 'effective'? Mortality is one option with the benefit that it's easily measured. T – How much time we need to collect all the data?

Our PICO statement would look like:

P - community dwelling adults

I - hands only CPR

C - hands plus breathing CPR

O – mortality

T – data to be collected during June.

From our PICO, we can write up a clearer and more specific question, such as: In community dwelling adults, how effective is hands-only CPR versus hands plus breathing CPR at preventing mortality?