SMILE
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Unit 2: Developing a practice-based question

PICO - The elements in more detail

The patient population or disease of interest:

  • With certain disorder (arthritis)
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Ethnicity

The intervention used in the study, if applicable

The alternative to the intervention (such as the comparison)  if applicable

  • BUT
  • For many questions, there is no intervention, only an issue of interest

Outcome of interest for example:

  • Risk of disease
  • Accuracy of diagnosis
  • Rate of occurrence of adverse outcome such as death
  • Attitudes, values, perceptions, experiences

(Melnyk and Fineout-overholt, 2005, p30)

These are some examples of outcome that may be specified. It is important to make your outcome specific, to save wasting search time. However, the tricky part is to be specific enough to avoid wasting time but not so specific that you fail to find potentially useful research. Start by taking a quite narrow focus, then if this doesn’t find enough useful research, try widening your search bit by bit.

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SMILE - Developing a practice based question by Jamie Frankis, Lesley Price, Ima Jackson SHLS and modified by Marion Kelt, Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License