Clinical questions are generally classified into one of two types:
Background questions: These look for general/factual information on a topic which applied to all patients; i.e., What is the etiology of SARS? What is the pediatric dose of At
Clinical questions are generally classified into one of two types:
Background questions: These look for general/factual information on a topic which applied to all patients; i.e., What is the etiology of SARS? What is the pediatric dose of Atrovent? Such questions can usually be answered using resources such as textbooks, drug references, review articles, etc.
Foreground questions: These seek evidence to form a basis for decisions about a specific patient, an intervention or therapy. Such questions can usually be answered using resources such as original research articles or secondary sources such as systematic reviews. Using the PICO format can help you design an answerable clinical foreground question.
PICO is a method that can help take you from a patient care situation/scenario to developing a foreground question, to help you focus on what exactly your information need is. Once you have these elements, you can move to converting them to search terms for your literature search.
P refers to the patient or population or problem
Describe either the patient's chief complaint or generalize the patient's condition to a larger population.
I refers to the intervention or indicator
What do you 