Communication Sciences & Disorders | SLP

PICO helps you to break a clinical problem into important concepts and formulate a searchable question that can be answered with research.

1. Begin with a clinical problem:

Your patient is a young, active female athlete with a partial ACL tear in her right knee.  She would like to avoid surgery. 

2. Express the problem using PICO:

3. Formulate the problem as a research question:

In a young female athlete with a partial ACL tear, is physical therapy as effective as surgery?

What are their most important characteristics?

• Primary problem
• Disease state
• Co-existing condition

Describe your patient specifically:

• Sex
• Age
• Ethnicity
• Socioeconomic factors

ALWAYS  include this piece in your search.

What do you want to do for the patient?

• Order a test
• Prescribe a drug
• Order a procedure

Other considerations:

• Main intervention
• Prognostic factors
• Exposures

Almost always include this piece in your search.

What is the alternate intervention, if any?

• A different drug
• No medication
• A placebo
• A different test
• A different procedure

It is less common to include this piece in a search.

What are you hoping to achieve, measure, or change for the patient?

• Alleviate symptoms 
• Improve test results
• Reduce adverse events
• Improve function
• Could also be the result NOT desired

Sometimes include this piece in your search.