Evidence Based Nursing QUESTIONS

[mvanz9999, RN]

Bah! I'm stuck.

Anyone have any suggestions for formulating evidence based nursing questions (I do not mean the PICO formatting, but the actual question)?

Sounds like a dumb thing to ask, but after researching about 10 different questions, I am unable to come up with an answerable question that I can locate 5 relevant articles on.

Here are some questions I tried:

"Is PCA an effective method of pain control for patients in sickle cell crisis"

"Is tap water an effective solution for wound irrigation in simple lacerations"

"Does hydroxyurea therapy in sickle cell patients result in fewer hospital visits".

Are these questions simply too specific/defined? Asking for 5 primary research articles is a bit ridiculous with all of the other restrictions we have (no reviews/meta analysis/non-peer reviews/etc).

Eh...it's worth a try asking though....

Thanks!

[loboscon08]

I wouldn't use the words "is" or does". I know with the system that I use for my school (CINAHL) to do searches it won't work if you use those words. I would try saying "effectiveness of tap water for wound irrigation". I think that the more words you use, the harder it is for a search to come back with something. Try to only use the main big words. What database do you use??? I have found CINAHL to be the easiest and best to use. I'm not sure if your school has that or not, but if they do, then try to search on there! If I were to do a search on there with one of your topics I would say "effectiveness of tap water" AND "wound irrigation", but don't use quotation marks. I hope this helps! Sorry if I confused you even more!

[mvanz9999, RN]

Thanks! I threw away all of my original questions and started over with less specific ones.

We have access to CINHAL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane, Essential Evidence Plus, PIER

You are right, CINHAL returns the most hits.