Evidence-Based Practice Nursing Guide

Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) is a method for making clinical decisions or answering clinical questions using the best available evidence in coordination with the expertise of the clinician and the preferences and values of the patient.

Clinical research questions are often framed using the abbreviation PICO. The elements of a PICO question are:

P:

What is the Patient population being studied?

I:

What is the Intervention being studied or recommended?

C:

What Comparison Interventions exist?

O:

What is the desired patient outcome?

Thinking about your clinical research question in terms of its PICO components can be a helpful way to begin the literature review process.

An important part of EBP is forming a good clinical question and finding and evaluating the evidence relating to the question. See the pyramid below for a quick overview of the ranking of information in EBP. 

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