Skip to Main Content

Mercy Health Youngstown Medical Library
Jeghers Medical Index

Evidence Based Practice

Asking your Question

Question Development Tool

These are the worksheets provided by the Johns Hopkins Evidence Based Model to formulate your clinical question.

Permission was granted from Johns Hopkins to use these tools. They may not be modified without written approval from Johns Hopkins
©The Johns Hopkins Hospital/The Johns Hopkins University

Background Questions

Background questions are are general in nature and provide foundational information on a single concept.  Background questions cover:

  • Terminology
  • General Pathology
  • Patient Education Resources
  • General Drug Information
  • Examination/Assessment Procedures

Examples: 
How is hypertension diagnosed?
What drugs are used to treat migraine?
How do I perform a psychological assessment?

These types of questions are best answered by textbooks and other general sources.

ebook Collections

Clinical Skills

  • AACN Procedure Manual for Critical Care, 6th Edition
  • Lippincott Procedures (onsite) - step by step nursing procedures and skills in a variety of specialty settings
  • Lippincott Advisor (onsite) - has immediate, evidence-based, online nursing clinical-decision support with over 17,000 monographs and patient teaching handouts. Clinical diagnosis and treatment, care planning, patient handouts
  • Professional Guide to SIgns and Symptoms - More than 300 of the most important signs and symptoms are organized alphabetically; each entry includes a description, emergency interventions (where appropriate), history and physical examination, causes, associated signs and symptoms, special considerations, pediatric pointers, geriatric pointers, and patient counseling. 

Drug Information

Lab Values

Anatomy & Physiology

Foreground Questions

Foreground questions yield specific knowledge that informs decisions or actions and generally compare two or more specific interventions.

A well-structured EBP question is important because the question will be used to develop the search strategies used in the next step of the process. Making the EBP question as specific as possible helps to identify and narrow search terms, which, in turn, reduces time spent searching for relevant evidence and increases the likelihood of finding it.  

An answerable question has a format that follows PICO. The acronym translates to: 

P

Patient/Population/Problem - age, sex, setting, ethnicity, condition, disease, type of patient, or population 

 

 Example: adult surgical patients between 20- 50 years old with a peripheral catheter
I Intervention -  treatment, medications, education, diagnostic tests or best practice(s)  Rotate site every 72 hours
C Comparison - (comparison with other interventions or current practice) may not be applicable if your question is looking for best practice.  Rotate site if clinically indicated
O Outcome - stated in measurable terms, expected outcomes based on the intervention identified, e.g., decrease in fall rate, decrease in length of stay, increase in patient satisfaction Improvements in patency rates, decreased phlebitis, decreased infection

 

 

PICO Resources

Articles

Websites