Need help with creating a PICO(T) question

[BethTurner]

Came up with a great idea for my capstone project, the inpatient bath basin, are they contaminated with germs and is it putting the patient at risk for getting infected. I need help with creating an awesome PICO(T) research question. Calling all nurses! Thanks in advance.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

mover for best response

[llg, PhD, RN]

The topic as you have stated it doesn't lend itself to a PICO question. That's probably why you are struggling with it and need help. For a true PICO question, you need to be able to form 2 groups for comparison. If your plan is to culture basins to see what grows, then you are not comparing 2 groups.

For a PICO question, decide what you are going to compare. You may need to do some work reviewing the evidence on this topic before you can decide what to compare to what. But you might decide to test 2 methods of cleaning the basins and see which method is most effective ... or compare which cleanin method leads to lower rates of infection in the patients. You might want to compare the use of a re-usable basin with the use of a disposable product -- which has the best infection rate? etc.

PICO questions are generally used in Evidence-Based Practice questions -- not research. They are used to help design a test that compares the effectiveness of 2 possible courses of actions. Your original thought of whether or not there are germs in the basin is not that type of practice issue as it does not involve the testing (and comparing results) of 2 possible interventions. So if you want to use that general topic, you'll need to develop the topic more to get to the point at which you have 2 possible interventions to compare with each other.

[BethTurner]

Thank you