Evidence-Based Healthcare Resources

PICO is an acronym to help researchers create focused, clinical questions. Each part of the PICO is a key concept in a clinical question

P - Patient/Problem/Population

How would you describe the patient or problem? This could include gender, age, disease, etc.

I - Intervention

What change or difference are you applying? Interventions could include medications, surgeries, 

C - Comparison

What are you comparing your intervention to? This could be an alternative intervention or even a placebo. The comparison might not be necessary in all PICO questions.

O - Outcome

What are you trying to accomplish or measure? 

Using parts of the PICO question as keywords can help you build a high quality search to find the best evidence-based information. 

PICO from National Library of Medicine