Question

This week's graded discussion topic relates to the following Course Outcomes (COs).

CO1 Examine the sources of evidence that contribute to professional nursing practice.

CO2 Apply research principles to the interpretation of the content of published research studies.

Reflect on your practice, and identify a significant nursing clinical issue or change project that you would like to search for evidence in online sources. Formulate searchable, clinical questions in the PICO(T) format for your nursing clinical issue.

Next, review the guidelines for the PICOT Assignment due Week 3. Use your PICOT elements to search for one report of a single, original study that has been published within the last 5 years from the CCN Library that is relevant to your nursing clinical issue. Briefly describe how it is relevant to your nursing clinical issue. Remember to give a complete reference to the study?

Answer 1

Solution: PICOT is a quantitative model and as mentioned in the lesson, not every part of the PICOT fits with every question. Some questions do not have a comparison group, some questions do not have an intervention.

P= Population you are asking the question about. This a group of patients rather than one person. There are case studies that examine one person--you may have experienced rounds where a number of disciplines gather and discuss one patient, but generally PICOT questions are looking at a group.

I= Intervention. Here you will be applying an intervention to help with a patient condition. The interventions are nursing care/education related. Interventions that involve medication are typically medication clinical trials and these are run by Healthcare Prescribers, not BSN nurses. Our focus is more on nursing care. Some questions will not involve an intervention if asking a descriptive question such as a predictive (risk factor) question or a correlational (relational) question.

C= Comparison Group. Here you compare the population to a group of patients that typically have "standard care" instead of the intervention. There are ethical issues here where patients must at least be provided care that would be given normally. Not all questions involve a comparison group.

O= Outcome. Here you are generally looking for a positive outcome. This is an improvement in the patient condition as a result of the intervention (of course it does not always work this way). If your question is descriptive, then you will be looking at what is happening and not at a change from an intervention. If risk factors are involved as in a predictive question, then the outcome can be negative such as certain lifestyle behaviors leading to disease.

T= Time again involves looking at the effects of an intervention over time. Generally nursing studies will take place over a reasonable amount of time due to time and resource considerations. I find that 6 months or a year often works. This could also apply to predictive questions where risk factors are followed over time to see if the negative outcomes appear. (ie high cholesterol leading to heart disease). The time for risk studies will generally take a great deal more time.

Reference:

Houser, J. (2018). Nursing research: Reading, using, and creating evidence (4th ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett.

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