CCP 104 Introduction to Research Evidence

Question 1

What does PICO stand for and why is it important in the context of a literature review?

Answer 1

1. PICO is an acronym which stands for “Problem/Patient/Population, intervention, comparison, outcome”.
2. Within the context of a literature review, PICO aids the individual in forming their question to facilitate the literature search. For example, “Does prehospital intubation lead to better or worse outcomes in TBI?”.
3. Analyzing this question from the PICO framework, one can see the Patient or Population are prehospital TBI patients, the intervention is prehospital RSI/ETI, the comparison would be something like RSI vs SGA vs manual airway maneuvers (or something similar), and the outcome would be “X”.