PICO And Literature Search Week 9
PICO And Literature Search Week 9
T o fully implement evidence- based practice (EBP), nurses need
to have both
a spirit of inquiry and a culture that supports it. Inour first article in
this series (“Igniting a Spirit of Inquiry:AnEssential Foundation for
Evidence-Based Practice,” November 2009),we defined a spirit of
inquiry as “an ongoing curiosity about the best evidence toguide
clinical decisionmaking.” A spirit of inquiry is the founda- tionof
EBP, andonce nurses pos- sess it, it’s easier to take the next step—
toask the clinical question.1
Formulating a clinical question in a systematicwaymakes it possible to find an answermore quickly and efficiently, leading to
improved processes and patient outcomes. In the last
installment,wegave
an overviewof themultistepEBP process (“The Seven Steps of
Evidence-Based Practice,” Janu- ary). Thismonthwe’ll discuss step
one, asking the clinical question. As a context for this
discussionwe’ll use the same
scenariowe used in the previous articles (see Case Scenario for
EBP: Rapid Response Teams). In this scenario, a staff nurse,
let’s call herRebeccaR., noted that patients on hermedical–
surgical unit had a high acuity level thatmay have led to an in