PICOT HELP

[MercedesBaseyScottRN, MSN]

Hello,

im currently in grad school and struggling with my PICOT question. It originally was:

In new graduate nurses (P), does a smaller nurse to patient ratio (I) compared to the traditional nurse to patient ratio on assigned unit © lead to lower staff turnover rates and improved job satisfaction (O) in their first three months of practice (T)?

But my instructor is encouraging me to change this since there is not a lot of research on the reduction of nurse to patient ratios.

I have already done a lot of work and research so I don't want to change the question too much. So I would rather keep my population and outcome the same and just have another implementation and comparison.

Most articles I have found discuss intent to leave in GNs being due to stress and feeling incompetent but I cannot think of a different implementation

[Hailie54]

Hey there!

I recently took a brutal nursing research course so I am pretty familiar with PICOT. After my spending my first few papers agonizing over finding studies relevant to my PICOT questions, I learned that the easiest thing to do is to get a general idea of a topic you want to cover (in your case would be new grads and turn over rates/stress) and then search using those key words. Once I find a few strong articles that display any hint of a trend I form the PICOT question around those articles. I don't know what your professor demands as far as levels of evidence go, but it's difficult to find reliable studies that will cater to a very specific question such as yours. Hope this helps and good luck!

[MercedesBaseyScottRN, MSN]

Hailie,

Thank you for your feedback. I originally attempted that because I've always noticed it's easier to do research when the topic is broad. It's just that PICOTs seem so specific in all that they require. I really couldnt think of ANYTHING that seemed broad.

I've found a variety of articles that discuss new grad stress and lists a variety of ways to reduce it, but never any articles that specifically discuss the implementation of anything.