PICOT Question and Search Strategy
Among the geriatric population at a long-term care facility, who are currently taking multiple medications due to chronic conditions or acute conditions, would review medications at each provider visit, fall, admission, or re-admission to reduce polypharmacy and its associated adverse reactions? You will formulate and write a clinical, administrative practice, public health policy, or program question that relates to your professional interests, and track and develop a search strategy based on that question. This assessment sets the stage for much of the writing you will complete in the course.
- Competency 1: Address assessment purpose in a well-organized text, incorporating appropriate evidence and tone in grammatically sound sentences.
- Compose well-developed paragraphs that address the assessment purpose.
- Produce text with minimal grammar, usage, spelling, and mechanical errors.
- Competency 3: Create a literature review that supports a possible intervention or process change.
- Implement a search strategy for literature based on your PICOT question.
- Competency 4: Obtain preceptor and practicum approval.
- Propose a PICOT question that has an appropriate scope for a DNP project.
The assessments in this course must be completed in the order presented; subsequent assessments should be built on both your earlier work and your instructor’s feedback on earlier assessments. If you choose to submit assessments prematurely, without considering and integrating your instructor’s feedback, your assessment may be returned ungraded, resulting in your loss of an assessment attempt.
Formulate and write a clinical problem question that relates to your professional interests and could be used for a DNP doctoral project. Ideally, this question relates to an identified problem at your doctoral practice site.
The work you do in this assessment will assist you in crafting Part 2 of your Project Charter in NURS-FPX9100. Your PICOT question will help you to identify evidence-based strategies that you will use in your doctoral project.
Use this format for developing a PICOT question:
- In ____________(P), how does __________(I) compared to desired state __________(C) affect the outcome __________(O) within __________(T).
- Here is an example of a PICOT question: For medical units experiencing a high number of “failure to rescue” (P), will the development of a rapid response team (RRT) (I) compared to the current emergency alert system (code blue) (C) decrease the number of “failure to rescue” and ICU admissions (O) and unplanned admissions to the ICU (O) over a 12-week period (T)?
Describe your search strategy and the results of your search in relation to the PICOT question. Think about these questions as you describe your search:
- Which electronic databases did you use?
- What were the key search terms used?
- What type of literature was excluded?
- How many articles or sources did your search yield?
- How did you decide which sources to retain?
This assessment will be graded according to the following scoring guide criteria.
- Propose a PICOT question that has an appropriate scope for a DNP project.
- A DNP project of appropriate scope:
- Can be completed in 8 to 12 weeks.
- Is a quality improvement project or a process improvement project (i.e., is not “research”)?
- Addresses a gap in practice, using an evidence-based intervention.
- Implement a search for literature to support your argument.
- Design a search strategy to support a problem question.
Compose well-developed paragraphs that address the assessment purpose.