PICO Questions – Ebling Library

Finding relevant medical information is often easier if you first develop a PICO question. This is a way of formulating a medical question to better match the capabilities of database (MEDLINE, etc.) search engines.

PICO is an acronym for:

PICO Example:

Therapy In a 4 year old boy requiring antibiotics, do probiotics decrease the risk of developing antibiotic associated diarrhea?

P = 4 yo male on antibiotics I = probiotics C = none/placebo O = decrease the risk of antibiotic associated diarrhea

PICO terms can be used to create a potential search strategy to search relevent EBM and health databases. Since terminology in the health in filled with synonyms, you may need to list and search multiple terms for a single concept:

P = antibiotics, antimicrobial agents I = probiotic, probiotics, lactobacillus, acidophilus O = diarrhea

From this PICO, a good search strategy might look like this:

(antibiotics OR antimicrobial agents) AND (probiotics OR lactobacillus OR acidophilus) AND diarrhea

Try using a PICO Worksheet to convert your scenario into a search query and process to find relevant articles in EBM resources and databases.

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PICO Questions - Ebling Library