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:
PICO Example:
In patients with chest tubes, does petroleum impregnated gauze reduce catheter dwell times as compared to dry gauze dressing?
P = patients with chest tubes
I = petroleum impregnated gauze
C = dry gauze dressing
O = catheter dwell times
Use AND to combine different concepts that are included in your PICO question.
Use OR to combine synonyms.
Truncation
Use an asterisk * to search for different word endings:
Use your PICO terms to create a search strategy to find relevant EBM and health databases. Terminology in the health sciences is filled with synonyms, so you may need multiple terms for a each concept.
CINAHL, PubMed and other databases provide a thesaurus or list of standardized subject headings (called MeSH headings in PubMed) that point to appropriate terms for your search.
(chest tube OR chest drain OR chest catheter)
AND
(gauze or dressing)
AND
(petroleum OR petrolatum)
AND
(dwell time OR time factors)