PICO
The first stage of any evidence-based practice process is formulating an answerable question. This forms the foundation for quality searching. A well-formulated question will facilitate the search for evidence and will assist you in determining whether the evidence is relevant to your question.
An answerable question has a format that follows the PICO concept. The acronym translates to:
- P – Populations/People/Patient/Problem
- I – Intervention(s)
- C – Comparison
- O – Outcome
This website from the University of Wisconsin-Madison may help you to understand and use the PICO concept to create a search strategy.
