Nursing Research Guide for NUR/NURC2241

P = Patient, population, or problem

I = Intervention

C = Comparison or control (if any)

O = Outcome

Use the PICO Worksheet to build your question and search strategy.

Scenario:

You work in a pediatrician’s office and give patients their routine vaccinations. The younger children are often fearful of needles, and some of the RNs use toys to distract the patients. You want to know if this technique actually has an effect on the children's pain response.

Construct a clinical question in PICO format.

P = young children

I = distraction techniques during immunization

C = no intervention

O = lower pain scores rated by the Faces pain scale

Clinical Question:

In young children, do distraction techniques during immunization administration using toys result in lower pain scores when compared to no intervention?

Source:

PICO Question Examples: Pediatrics from University of Kansas Medical Center, Nursing Research Guide, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Once you have selected a topic and before you start searching for resources, it is helpful to perform these steps:

Topic: Are alcohol based hand sanitizers more effective or less effective than handwashing in reducing hospital infections?

Step 1: Identify the P, I, C, and O components in your topic question.

Population or Problem: hospital infections

Intervention: alcohol based hand sanitizers

Comparison: handwashing

Outcome: reduced infections

Step 2: Brainstorm keywords for each concept:
Try thinking of synonyms and related terms. A thesaurus may be helpful. 

Step 3: Combine your terms in a search

Note: You may need to try different combinations of keywords to find the search that produces the best results.

infect*

AND

hand sanitizer* OR handwashing

AND

hospital*

Step 4: Search an appropriate resource

Step 5: Review results for alternative keywords or subject headings and redo search (as needed)