Forming Focused Questions with PICO: About PICO

• Patient or problem
• Intervention
• Comparison
• Outcome

Additional letters (PICOTTS)

• Timeframe
• Type of study
• Setting

• In academia when you are looking for evidence to support best practice
• In practice when you have a question about patient care

• Helps you form a focused question that will return relevant results
• Helps you retrieve a manageable amount of results
• Assists you in brainstorming keywords for your research
• Saves time!

For more information about Nursing research, view these guides:

Other guides and tools: