2. WHERE TO GET IDEAS FOR
RESEARCH
Your textbooks
Discussions in class
Current journals
Conversations
with friends
3. ADD PICO TO YOUR
RESEARCH!
PICO is a mnemonic used to describe the
four elements of a good clinical question.
Identify:
● Patient, problem, predicament,
principle person or thing, etc.
● Intervention, issue of interest
● Comparison (optional)
● Outcome
4. WHAT’S THE QUESTION?
“Among postmenopausal women, does
diet therapy, compared to drug
therapy, make a difference in the loss of
bone mass (osteoporosis)?”
Population =
Intervention =
Comparison =
Outcome =
postmenopausal women
diet therapy
drug therapy
makes a difference in the loss
of bone mass (osteoporosis)
5. SEARCHING STRATEGIES
Use Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT to
combine search words.
Use quotation marks “” to search for phrases.
Example: “diet therapy”
6. AND
Used to narrow and retrieve article records
(i.e. descriptions) containing ALL search
words.
Example: “postmenopausal women” AND
“diet therapy”
10. NOT
Used to narrow search and retrieve records
that do NOT contain the search word following
it.
Example: humans NOT rats
Example: animals NOT rats
