Module 1.2 Translate a knowledge gap into a clinical question

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Translating a knowledge gap into an answerable and well built clinical question is an important skill.

A well built clinical question:

• Gives you a head start in finding information that is relevant (applicable to the patient) and valid (accurately measures what the authors state they intend to measure).
• Provides you with a checklist for the main concepts to be included in your search strategy.
• Allows you to find information quickly. If tracking down the evidence takes too long, you will probably avoid it in your clinical practice.

The PICO framework is an effective tool for constructing a well built clinical question.

Click on each of the letters below to identify the PICO elements that can be used in a range of clinical questions.

Let’s have a look at a PICO example. This little story,  focusses on the care of a patient and explores some of the clinical questions that arose during the encounter.

Formulating a well built clinical question : A PICO Story – Part A:

Formulating a well built clinical question: A PICO Story – Part B:

Now that you have some context, let’s move onto Part B of the story. This part allows you to focus on how the questions, posed by the 5 hospital personnel, can be translated into the PICO framework.

The activities in the slides below, provide you with an opportunity to delve further into each of the questions posed by the Intern, Nurse, Podiatrist, Physiotherapist and Dentist to identify:

• the population of the encounter
• any intervention/s posed
• any comparison/s (alternative/s) that are considered and
• any outcomes that arise from the interventions/comparisons

Instructions: drag and drop the information from the question, into the correct PICO element. To see if you are correct, click the blue Check icon.

This part of Module 1.2 is a recap and pulls all of the information from both parts of the PICO Story – Part A (the scenario) and Part B (the questions asked by the hospital personnel) – into a neat little PICO pack. Toggle through the PICO accordion below for the recap.

We hope you enjoyed your exploration of the PICO tool, that you can use to construct and build your clinical questions. We hope that it provided an insight into the patient encounter and the many possible questions that arose, during the encounter. You can use the information in this Module, as a guide to help you with your own patient encounters.