Module 1: Professional Accountability and Prescribing

Lesson 5

Step 1: Define

Clearly defining a clinical question using Patient-Intervention-Comparator-Outcome (PICO) to assist in effectively targeting the search for credible research.

Patient/problem

P – (patient/problem) Describe the problem/patient (e.g. age, gender, hospitalized, in the community)

Intervention

I – (intervention) Intervention of interest (e.g. drug, device, procedure)

Comparator

C (comparator) What you want to compare the interventions against, comparison data sought

Outcome

O (outcome) What outcomes do you want to find out (e.g. Risks/Safety/Death, economic benefit, clinical outcomes, general available evidence)