The first step toward performing an effective literature search is to ensure that you have a well defined question. Thinking carefully about exactly what question you are asking, framing it clearly as a question, and breaking it out into PICO components helps you identify a clear picture of what kind of information you are hoping to find to answer your question and advance your project.
Breaking your question out into its PICO components is helpful in order to make sure you've fully considered all the elements of your question, and also to help you start thinking about your question as separate pieces and how they fit together. Learning how to break your search topic into smaller components is an important part of translating your question into a search strategy!
A PICO question is the best way to build a well defined clinical question. It is a way of trying to ask the right question. There are usually four parts to a well built question:
P - Patient/Population or Problem (among)
I - Intervention / Exposure (does)
C - Comparison (verses)
O - Outcome (affect)
A school nurse is asked if zinc lozenges are an effective treatment to shorten cold symptoms for a child in grade school. Let's turn that into the PICO question format.
P (Population) - school aged child with a cold
I (Intervention)- zinc lozenges
C (Comparison) - nothing -no keyword here
O (Outcome) - shorten cold symptoms
Download this PDF to start your PICO Question, concepts and databases to try.