PICO and Literature Search Purpose: PICO questions are used by practicing nurses and researchers to focus

PICO and Literature Search

Purpose: PICO questions are used by practicing nurses and researchers to focus research questions and develop an efficient literature search strategy.  It is essential that future nurses learn how to do this to develop evidenced-based solutions to patient care problems in a healthcare organization. 

Instructions:

1. Write a PICO question based on a scenario you choose from the list of scenarios attached below.  Use the templates in the EBP Step by Step 3 article to help create your questions. You may need to do a pre-search to finding an intervention (the "I") that has been studied and published to solve the problem.

2. Identify the PICO elements for each question. 

3. Develop a search strategy using at least 3 keywords from the P, I, and O parts of your PICO, 1 synonym for one of the keywords, and 1 MeSH term for one of your keywords. 

4. Locate 4 articles that help answer your PICO question.  The articles must meet the following requirements: 

o must be primary source quantitative research articles.  

o No article can be published prior to 2016. 

5. Obtain pdfs of the four articles you selected from EBSCO database.  They must show the full text of the entire article.  

6. On a Word document, include your scenario; write your PICO question as a sentence; identify the P, I, C, and O for each question; and list the search terms (3 keywords, 1 synonym, 1 MeSH term) for each. You may use the template attached here. See also the link to the MeSH terms website below.

7. Provide a properly formatted APA reference page for your selected articles from Step 4 of these instructions. 

No plagiarism. Grammarly report needed.