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:
Population |
athlete with partial ACL tear
|
Intervention |
physical therapy
|
Comparison |
surgery
|
Outcome |
stable functioning knee
|
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?