PICOT

[helpinghealth]

Anyone have suggestions on where to go with my PICOT?

I want to focus on oral health in type 2 diabetic patients. I was thinking about implementation of an oral health tool in primary care compared to??? not sure what would go here (motivational support/education on oral health) improve dental caries? decreases ER dental visits??

or would it be better to focus on peridontal disease in diabetes and sugar control?

any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[Stephers85]

Hi there,

I would recommend that your topic be fairly specific and consider what your goal or expected outcome would be for your intervention. For example, if there is a higher amount of ER visits for dental caries specifically among DM2, you could look at how your intervention would affect that. If your concern is more about the incidence of periodontal disease among diabetics, you could use that. I would try to steer away from multiple outcome variables as it might make your research a lot more work on you, ie. A1C levels and periodontal disease incidence. Your PICOT could look something like this (based on what you've provided):

In type 2 diabetics (P), how does the use of oral health education in PCP settings (I) reduce the number of ER visits for dental caries (O) compared to diabetics who do not receive additional oral health education/motivational support ©? (You could slip your "T" in there after visits within a ".." timeframe)

Here's a link to a template, hope this helps!

https://www.aaacn.org/sites/default/files/documents/misc-docs/1e_PICOT_Questions_template.pdf