Evidence Based Medicine

PICO is a format that helps construct an answerable questions and devise a strategy for searching for evidence. The PICO question has 4 parts. 

Patient
Information about the patient e.g. age, diagnosis, other important criteria

Intervention
Treatment, exposure, diagnostic test

Comparison

Comparison treatment, exposure, diagnostic test (usually gold standard)

Outcome

What you are trying to measure or see improvement in.

• Be as specific as possible when constructing your question.
• Although many questions are treatment questions, PICO questions can be constructed for diagnosis and other types of questions too.

Question:

Do adults with acute bronchitis who are treated with antibiotics have faster improvement in clinical symptoms compared to those who are given inhaled albuterol? 

Patient - adults with acute bronchitis

Intervention - antibiotics

Comparison - inhaled albuterol

Outcome - earlier improvement in clinical symptoms