Consider a recent clinical experience providing care for patients in ED.
Determine the extent to which the care that you provided was based on evidence and research findings or supported only by your organization’s standard procedures. How do you know if the tasks were based on research?
Review Chapter 2, pages 36—39 on “Asking Well worded Clinical Questions” in Polit & Beck and consult the resource on Clinical Question Anatomy & examples of PICOT questions ( included) Formulate your background questions and PICOT question ( Does staff ED Registered Nurse turnover in major city hospital impact patient satisfaction during the busy season?)
Reflect on the barriers that might inhibit the implementation of evidence-based practice in your clinical environment.
Review the article “Adopting Evidence-Based Practice in Clinical Decision Making” Select one of the barriers described that is evident in your organization and formulate a plan for overcoming this barrier.
Write an evaluation of the use, or lack thereof, of EBP in a recent clinical experience. Identify which aspects of the care delivered, if any, were based on evidence and provide your rationale. List your background questions and PICOT question about this nursing topic. Critique how the policies, procedures, and culture of a hospital organization may hinder or support the adoption of evidence-based practices. Identify the barrier you selected from the article and explain how this barrier could be overcome within your organization.

Polit, D. F., & Beck, C. T. (2012). Nursing research: Generating and assessing evidence for nursing practice (Laureate Education, Inc., custom ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.Chapter 2, “Evidence-Based Nursing: Translating Research Evidence into Practice”
Shaheen, M., Foo, S., Luyt, B., Zhang, X., Theng, Y-L., Chang, Y-K., & Mokhtar, I. A. (2011). Adopting evidence-based practice in clinical decision making: Nurses’ perceptions, knowledge, and barriers. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 99(3), 229–236Shivnan, J. C. (2011).

How do you support your staff? Promote EBP. Nursing Management, 42(2), 12–14.
PICOT example
The first step in doing evidence-based practice research is forming a researchable question. Questions that are too broad or too narrow can make your research difficult, if not impossible. For example:

Too broad: How do you control infection?
This topic is so broad that you’d have difficulty wading through all of the results.
Too narrow: At the Johns Hopkins Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, what is the best way to control infection among Asian American babies born at 32 weeks?
This question is so specific that there probably hasn’t been anything published on that specific location regarding that specific population.
Just right: In the NICU, what is the effect of hand washing on infection control compared with hand sanitizers, over 6 months?

On this page we will cover:

using PICOT as a guide in developing a researchable question
turning your research question into search terms
PICOT
PICOT is a mnemonic that helps you remember the key components of a well-focused question. It stands for:

P = Patient, Population or Problem
I = Intervention, Prognostic Factor, or Exposure
C = Comparison (optional)
O = Outcome
T = Time

Once you’ve identified each aspect of your PICOT, here is a formula that you can use to turn it into a question:

In ___________ (P), what is the effect of ___________ (I) on __________ (O) compared with _____________ (C) over _____________ (T)?

For example:

In the NICU, what is the effect of hand washing on infection control compared with hand sanitizers, over 6 months?