Clinical Inquiry – NURS 3270
PICO Worksheet
PICO Worksheet – Module 2
Purpose:
The purpose of this worksheet assignment, like all assignments in this course, is to help prepare you to
be a successful nurse. If the assignments in this course are to challenge you, empower your research,
and collectively develop a framework to formulate effective clinical questions and help narrow down
your project.
Knowledge:
The purpose of this assignment is to help you practice the content knowledge that are essential to your
success in the course:
● Module 2 Outcome #1: Analyze how qualitative findings can be used in evidence-based practice
● Module 1 Outcome #4: Formulate a clinical question using the PICO format.
Application:
This assignment will also help you become familiar with the following important content application in
this discipline:
● Identifying a real-world problem in the clinical healthcare setting
● Researching evidence-based solutions to the real-world problem in the clinical healthcare setting
Task:
1. Complete the PICO Worksheet by filling in each section of the worksheet (the PICO will serve as
the focus of the Evidence-Based Practice Project).
2. Submit your report in Blackboard.
PICO Worksheet
Clinical Inquiry – NURS 3270
PICO Worksheet
(A framework to formulate effective clinical questions.)
Name: Umar Ibrahim
Identify a nursing clinical practice problem/issue to address: Long Shifts within the Nursing Field
In 5-6 sentences, discuss the significance of the problem:
The issue surrounding long shifts in nursing is very multidimensional with implications for patients,
nurses, and all other parties tied to the process of healthcare. First, these shifts lead to a more stressful,
fatigue-inducing, burnout syndrome, and overall a negative prospect toward nursing job performance.
This can result in a high nursing turnover rate and can make it difficult to keep experienced nursing staff.
Next, exhaustion causes cognitive lapses and errors in patient interactions. These issues and numerous
others related to this topic require the need to adopt changes within the healthcare environment for
nurses to create a healthier balance.
Identify the focus of the clinical question (check one):
_x__ Intervention
____ Prevention
____ Etiology
____ Qualitative
Write out your question:
Question templates to consider for the type of question noted above:
Intervention:
In the climate concerning long shifts nurses, what is the impact of executing strategies to reduce
the duration of the effects of long shifts on the nurses well being, patient safety, job satisfaction,
medication error, and overall quality compared with established practices?
Is this a background or foreground question? Why – explain.
It is a foreground study that is addressed. An explicit, focused response to a foreground question is often
needed to determine the effects of a given intervention or strategy in a specific group or situation. In this
situation, the question concerns how applying measures to deal with lengthy shifts in nursing would
affect various results when compared to standard methods. It needs a review of the data that has been
collected and research on the particular intervention and how it impacts what is needed. When deciding
how to push a policy or care for a patient, foreground questions are employed since they call for more
centralized replies and detailed feedback.
Clinical Inquiry – NURS 3270
PICO Worksheet
Identify the surrogate or keywords/keyphrase for each PICO Element and record it in the table below.
PICO Element
Search Terms (e.g., Keywords/Key phrases)
Population:
Registered nurses
Long shifts
Healthcare settings
Intervention:
Strategies
Scheduling modifications
Rest breaks
Fatigue management programs
Comparison:
Standard practices
Current practices
Usual care
Outcome:
Nurse well-being
Fatigue
Job satisfaction
Patient safety
Medication errors
Clinical Inquiry – NURS 3270
PICO Worksheet
Criteria for Success (Rubric):
Criteria
Points/Points Earned
Problem identification
20/
Significance
20/
Identify the Focus of Clinical Question
20/
Construct a PICO question & identify if foreground or background
20/
Identify the Key Terms
20/
Total Points
100/