1. Identify Your Question

You need to identify what information you need  - think about the question you are asking, what do you need to know? You can use the PICO tool to help you to identify the information you need.

Who is the patient or what type of patient population are you interested in?

  • what are the characteristics of the patient(s)? Example: age, gender, social class, disability
  • what is their medical condition or what condition do they suffer from?

What is the intervention that you are interested in?

  • what treatment are you investigating?
  • what change in practice are you looking at?

What is the comparison treatment that you want to compare your intervention against?

  • is there a standard treatment / practice to compare against?
  • are you comparing against no treatment?

What outcomes are you interested in?

  • what changes are you looking to see in your patients? Example: improvement in condition, reduction in pain, improvement in mobility, increased quality of life

Use our Literature Search Plan to help you to think about PICO.

See the section "Formulate an answerable question" in the Evidence-Based Practice Workbook.

Try this quiz to see if you can identify the patient, intervention, comparison and outcome.

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