This document provides instructions for conducting a PICOT search to answer the question "Does the use of heel protection protocol in supine positioned surgical patients decrease the incidence of heel pressure ulcers?". It explains the PICOT components of patient population, intervention, comparison, outcome, and time. Keywords are identified for each PICOT element from the question. The PICOT search form organizes keywords by PICOT component and indicates whether related terms should be searched with "OR" or "AND". The document directs searching CINAHL using subject headings converted from keywords and filters such as limiting to the last 5 years. It notes a search of this question retrieved 33 relevant citations.

1. How to do a
PICOT search
Swati Wagh, MLS, MS
Science Outreach Librarian
Benedictine University, Lisle, IL
847-312-4845

2. •
The topic I am going to address is:
Does the use of heel protection protocol in supine positioned surgical
patients decrease the incidence of heel pressure ulcers?
The bolded words are key concepts we are going to use in our search in CINAHL
Key Words are:
Heel Protection protocol
Supine surgical patients
Heel pressure ulcers

3. PICOT SEARCH FORM
Key words Related terms
Synonyms
Related terms
synonyms
P Patient, problem,
population
OR OR
I Intervention, Exposure AND
C Comparison, control AND
O Outcome AND
T Time

4. PICOT SEARCH FORM
P Patient population,
problem
Surg*
patient*
OR Supine surg*
patient*
OR Surg* patient*
position*
I Intervention, exposure AND Heel protect*
protocol*
OR
C Comparison, Control AND absence of
heel protect*
OR Types of Heel
protect*
OR Control Heel
Pressure ulcer*
O Outcome AND No heel
pressure
ulcer*
OR Decreased heel
pressure ulcer*
T We are going to keep
this blank, as the
question does not
specify it.

5. •The form shows that the horizontal rows are
“OR”
•The vertical columns are “AND”
•Armed with these key words we are going
to CINAHL and watch a live demo.

6. • This is a screen shot from our key word search in CINAHL

9. • Limit 5 years
• Click on “Show more” under the Year bar. You will get the first screen in CINAHL again

11. •For the actual process watch the
attached video.
•Keywords converted to Subject
Headings will show us:

13. • In the video you will actually see how I got the Subject Headings
• (MH "Surgical Patients") AND (MH "Heel Ulcer/PC") OR "Heel protectors“
• Heel Ulcer/PC I used the subheading Prevention and Control (PC)
• “heel protectors” was not a subject heading. So, I used it as a key word
from the Subject Headings search. The system tells you this as an option.
• Between 1963-current I got 2,458 records
• Now I am going to use the filters on the left-hand side to reduce the record
numbers.

15. • You will see that the resulting set of records limited to current 5 years and “any author is
nurse” and English language gets 33 citations.
• A lot of them are full text. Start evaluating relevant articles based on the title and
abstracts.
• Let me know which ones were selected?
• Thanks for watching the video.

16. • Sulbha Wagh
• Science Outreach Librarian
• Outreach Services
• Phone: (630) 8296054 | Currently working from
home. 847-312-4845
• Send Sulbha an Email | Office: Kindlon 313