Posted by PICO (T) is essential for making clinical questions in nursing research. As a nursing student, you must know that evidence-based research papers form a major part of your assignment. Good PICO nursing questions address most of the aspects of PICO. The process of designing questions starts with a case, and the student then prepares the question to bring a solution to that case. In your paper, you will develop clinical questions as per the PICO framework, which includes patient/problem/population, intervention/comparison, outcome, and time. In this article, you’ll find more about the PICO process. You’ll also discover a range of good questions on which you can prepare your paper.
What does PICO (T) Mean?
PICO (T) refers to a format that develops a clinical research question before the research starts. It’s a mnemonic that explains the four parts of a good clinical foreground question. These four parts consist of the patient, intervention, comparison, and outcome. Sometimes, it can also include time. The PICO (T) procedure starts with a case scenario. The question is built to get an answer. It should identify the patient under study. It should also identify the treatment that the nurse will use.
The PICO (T) question also consists of comparing the various interventions and the anticipated result. When such a question gets created, researchers can better search the literature for proof that lends support to their earlier PICO question.
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Why are PICO Nursing Questions Important?
PICO nursing is fully evidence-based. It’s based on the collection, review, and incorporation of valid research. So, it’s not about creating new knowledge or validating the current one. Instead, it is about reviewing current evidence for its application to clinical decision-making.
Nursing practices based on proof connect theory and research to practice. So, it gives clinicians reliable and current data. It helps them to guide patient care decisions better. Studies show that patients’ results get enhanced when healthcare practices come from factual studies. On the other hand, they become poor when healthcare practices come from conventional clinical expertise.
How to Write PICO Nursing Questions?
A good PICO nursing question identifies the population, action, comparison, and the outcome you predict. All these main elements are described in detail below.
1. Population
Essentially, the population shows people in a set geographic region under similar conditions. However, you can specialize it to a specific group. You can also break it to bring forward a part of the total number of people under study in review to the matter in question. Whenever you are preparing nursing PICO questions, you must think in terms of gender, age, social and economic status, ethnicity, and medical records. These should be more important than the problem.
Recently, studies show that people having similar conditions do share something common. So, it allows them to be grouped in the same population group sample. Put simply, all that you cover under population will go down from generalization to a specific patient. It will be easier if you equate this part of your PICO question as to the ‘who’ stage. It’s because you start knowing your patient as they come into the treatment.
2. Action or intervention
It implies where you come in to care for the patient. It’s the point where you, as a nurse, act between the patient and the condition. In this stage, you must question yourself what exactly you desire to do with your patient. It can be a variety of actions like a lifestyle change, medication, therapy, or test. It can also be a surgical action. You must ask yourself about the strategy to manage the condition in this stage. You must also know the diagnostic test or the exposure you want. Intervention can be a preventive measure. For example, a lifestyle change. It can also be some ‘watchful waiting.’
3. Comparison
Every part of the PICO question process is essential. In the comparison part, you compare the various interventions. So, one treatment gets compared with another one. It proves to be highly useful to researchers, allowing them to become more precise. Through it, they can remove all the possibilities of being incorrect. It also reduces the chances of misjudging the treatment. But there are also some cases where there’s no data to compare. However, it does not pose a big problem.
4. Outcome
The outcome in PICO nursing questions is all about the results you see. This stage gives you the results. This process comprises rigorous study of various findings. Thus, it makes it a highly precise and effective process. By the time the testing of all the data finishes, you’ll be able to find the risks involved. You’ll also be able to find any side-effects and whether you’ll get the outcome you expect to see.
There are two different viewpoints when it comes to outcomes. You can either go with the disease-oriented view or with the patient-oriented viewpoint. These viewpoints can pinpoint varied results. However, both of them are accurate. In some cases, researchers bring a combination of both effects. It helps them to provide a more conclusive report.
5. Time frame
Most students do not consider the time frame. However, when you view detailed nursing PICO question examples, you will find that time frame is included. Remember that it’s not as integral as the other four elements. Time is essentially aimed at data gathering. It is also aimed at giving the time of outcome. In certain cases, the time frame can be highly critical to find the extent of the ailment and its progression. There are various conditions that ‘graduate’ with time. The patient harbors alleviated signs of it.
However, throughout the entire process, various other factors are there as well. For instance, you must consider the setup of background and foreground questions. The former setting is to understand the disease in detail and the patient as well. So, you’ll know precisely what you are dealing with. The latter setting helps nursing students and researchers in making clinical decisions. You can pose questions on the conditions and how it started in the background question setup. Here you can also ask the patient how they felt and the symptoms they experienced. Apart from that, you can also ask them how they dealt with the disease.
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Parts of foreground question
Researchers further break the foreground questions into four more parts. They are as follows.
- Therapy – Therapy is not just a medical process that helps patients overcome something. In a PICO question, therapy refers to questions of treatment that helps in getting a specific outcome. Therapy can cover various things like drugs and lifestyle changes. It can also include surgical interventions and counseling. Therapy questions differ according to the population and other variables.
- Diagnosis – Diagnosis refers to recognizing the disorder in a patient. Physicians diagnose a disorder based on the signs that a person shows. Diagnosis is one of the initial factors. It creates the ground for research. It gives specifics to clinicians, and on their basis, they can conduct their research well. For example, there can be some disease whose signs closely relate to that of another disease. But it is only when you closely examine them can you clearly tell what the patient is experiencing. Thus, with the help of diagnosis, doctors can narrow down various possibilities to only a few ones.
- Prognosis – For any researcher, knowing the disease progression is crucial. You must know about the chance of the condition occurring or the extent it has come. It turns out to be much more helpful than you can think about. Prognosis brings out the distinction between medicine and action plan. It means asking certain questions to the patient in order to pinpoint some specifics and collect as much data as you can. Never forget that the more information you collect about the condition, the more quality treatment you can impart.
- Harm – Harm or etiology is essentially queries of the negative effect that may be an outcome of external exposure. These questions enable you to recognize your starting point because they can indicate what works well for the patient that does not work for other patients. Apart from that, you can also find out if you need to carry on from any point that you left before. You can also find out if you must start over the process by going through prior interventions.
- Prevention – Prevention helps in finding how you can prevent this disease from occurring again. It can also include how to stop it from spreading. In PICO nursing questions framework, you should explore every chance of the health condition of the patient. It also has preventive actions that you can take and the outcome you expect from it. It can include bed rest, productivity, and mortality rate.
A List of PICO Nursing Questions
Framing the perfect question can be a bit challenging. But now you can let go of your worries. Here are some of the most thoughtful nursing PICO question examples.
- Do pain diaries work well for cancer patients?
- Is the usage of toys as a distraction during needle vaccinations a good pain managing technique for toddlers?
- Do bedside shift reports aid in the total patient care for various nurses?
- Is the usage of anti-bacterial foam dispensers healthy for nurses?
- Is home visitation a better strategy than frequent school visits when dealing with teen pregnancy in rural areas?
- Are exercise routines really effective for those with hypertension?
- Which is more effective for children experiencing seasonal flu? Nasal aspirate or nasal swab
- What are the health results for those above 21 years who consume a high potassium diet?
- What are the results of children with low blood pressure who eat a high potassium diet?
- Do the chances of pneumonia decrease if the head of a mechanically ventilated bed is raised?
- Is cup feeding an infant more beneficial than feeding them via tubes in the NICU setup?
- Is the lithotomy position perfect for giving birth to a lady in labor?
- Can patients with CVLs be better treated with flushing heroine through lines?
- Can infants with fatal conditions benefit from using intravenous fluid?
- What is the ideal method to give oxygen during the oxygenation process for three months old kids?
- Can children experiencing hypoglycemia benefit from controlling the level of sublingual sugar?
- What are the ideal standards of starting and ending an oxygen therapy?
- Which is a better therapy for patients above 60 years? Negative therapy wound pressure or standard moist?
- Does group therapies help schizophrenic patients with their communication skills?
- Is a new exercise routine effective in preventing dangerous heart diseases among women who have a family history of cardiac disease?
- Is psychological intervention better than placebo for people with dementia?
- How effective are beta-blockers for reducing blood pressure among men over 70 years?
- Is medical action good at dealing with childhood obesity?
- If healthcare workers wash hands frequently, would it minimize the spread of infections in clinics?
- Can children with sepsis benefit from prolonged ICU stays?
- Can bullying get combated with mental health presentations by nurses in schools?
- Is skin-to-skin contact of mother and infant ensure neonatal mortality than drying or wrapping?
- Do oral contraceptives cause blood clotting issues among women over 40 years?
- Is an annual mammogram important for detecting breast cancer among women over 40?
- Why is it so tough to detect any C difficile among children below five years?
- What are the anticipated outcomes of patients with MRSA?
- Are oral contraceptives effective in halting pregnancy for women over 30 years?
- Which is more effective, constant feed during emesis or stopping the feed briefly?
- Are in-line suction catheters better than regular catheters for minimizing infection risk?
- The uses of insuflon port in herapin therapy for children?
- Can half an hour of exercise minimize heart diseases in people over 65 years?
- Can you address hypertension triggers by daily blood pressure monitoring among men over 65 years?
Final Words
Hopefully, you must have gained many insights about PICO nursing questions after reading this article. You can now frame a good question by yourself. If you don’t find good ones, take help from those in this article. For additional paper help, you can seek expert nursing assignment help services.
Also read : Detailed understanding of Pico Nursing Questions