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
