PICO is an acronym used to form clinical questions.
Evidence-based nursing (EBN) is an area of evidence-based practice that uses the best evidence available to make decisions about the care of individual patients in the field of nursing. Scott and McSherry (2009) defined EBN as "an ongoing process by which evidence, nursing theory and the practitioners’ clinical expertise are critically evaluated and considered, in conjunction with patient involvement, to provide delivery of optimum nursing care for the individual."
The well-built clinical question is the key first step to evidence-based decision making. The well-built clinical question synthesizes information about the patient, intervention/treatment, comparison treatment, and desired outcome in a form that is searchable and answerable. Most evidence-based practice uses the PICO framework or a variant to develop the well-built clinical question.
Example: You have an older male patient who presents with a cold and a sore throat. His daughter has suggested that he take Tylenol to reduce the soreness of his throat, but the patient has heard that echinacea tea is also a possible treatment.
Patient - Older male with sore throat
Intervention - Echinacea tea
Comparison - Tylenol
Outcome - Reduction of soreness
Well-Built Clinical Question: In adult men with sore throats, is consuming echinacea tea more effective than Tylenol at reducing pain and soreness?
Check with your instructor before using Internet resources. Some instructors will want you to use library databases exclusively. When selecting Internet resources it is important to evaluate the quality of any websites that you use.