Take the time to carefully develop your question at the beginning. To construct a well-built clinical question, consider the four parts of a good 'PICO' question:
P= Patient / Population
How would you describe your group of patients or population? What are the most important characteristics of the patient/population? This may include a disease, a condition, or a problem. Sometimes the gender, age or race of a patient may be relevant to the diagnosis or treatment of a disease.
I= Intervention, prognostic factor or exposure
What main intervention, prognostic factor, or exposure are you considering? What do you want to do for or with the patient/population? For example, will you try a different treatment/intervention or use a different diagnostic test?
C= Comparison
What is the main alternative to compare with the intervention? For example, are you trying to decide between two drugs or between a a drug and no medication or a placebo? Your clinical question may not always have a specific comparison.
O= Outcome
What can you hope to accomplish, measure, improve or affect? What are you trying to do for the patient/population? Relieve or eliminate the symptoms? Reduce the number of adverse events? Improve function or test scores?
