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Library Orientation for Nursing

This library orientation is geared toward nurses conducting research via the Rush Library.

How to Construct a Search Strategy

In this section we will review the steps you take in order to perform an effective search using databases and other resources. Every search begins with a research question or topic. If you have not developed your research question or chosen your topic you will need to complete this first step.

Step 1: Develop a research question or choose a topic

Step 2: Brainstorm your search terms, including MeSH terms, that should be included in your search

Step 3: Use Boolean logic to combine your terms

Step 4: Perform a preliminary search to determine if their is any literature on your topic (You can schedule an appointment with a librarian to assist you with performing your preliminary search.)

Step 5: Keep a record of your search strategy

Research Steps

Developing Your Question Using PICO

PICO is an acronym for:

  • Patient
  • Intervention
  • Comparison
  • Outcome

PICO is used to create a researchable question based on a clinical situation you have encountered.  Based on your PICO question, you will identify keywords and/or subject terms to use in database searches. 

You can use PICO to develop your clinical question.

P - Patient or population/disease:

Which population are you studying? (Consider age, gender, ethnicity, group with a certain disorder, etc.)

I - Intervention, prognostic factor, or exposure

What do you want to do for the patient? (Consider therapy, exposure to a disease, risk behavior, prognostic factor, preventative measure, or diagnostic test)

C - Comparison or control

Are you comparing two interventions or variables? (Consider absence of disease, absence of risk factor, or use of placebo)

O - Outcome

What is the expected result or what do you hope to accomplish, improve or affect? (Consider disease incidence, accuracy of a diagnosis, rate of occurrence of adverse outcome, survival or mortality rates)What is the expected result or what do you hope to accomplish, improve or affect? (Consider disease incidence, accuracy of a diagnosis, rate of occurrence of adverse outcome, survival or mortality rates)

Study Design Tree

Study Design Tree

Figure from Tree of different types of studies, CEBM, https://www.cebm.net/2014/04/study-designs/

Spotting the Study Design

The type of study can generally be worked at by looking at three issues (as per the Tree of design in Figure 1):

Q1. What was the aim of the study?

  1. To simply describe a population (PO questions) ► descriptive
  2. To quantify the relationship between factors (PICO questions) ► analytic

Q2. If analytic, was the intervention randomly allocated?

  1. Yes? ► RCT
  2. No? ► Observational study

For observational study the main types will then depend on the timing of the measurement of outcome, so our third question is:

Q3. When were the outcomes determined?

  1. Some time after the exposure or intervention? ► cohort study (‘prospective study’)
  2. At the same time as the exposure or intervention? ► cross sectional study or survey
  3. Before the exposure was determined? ► case-control study (‘retrospective study’ based on recall of the exposure)"
Information from Spotting the Study Design, CEBM, https://www.cebm.net/2014/04/study-designs/