Nursing and Allied Health: Literature Searching: Overview

Patient/Population Intervention Comparison Outcomes

Who is your patient?

• Age, sex, race or patient
• Primary problem
• Health status

What do you plan on doing for the patient?

• Diagnostic test
• Medication
• Procedure

What alternative are you considering?

• Another test, medication or procedure
• Watchful waiting

What do you wish to accomplish?

• Accurate diagnosis
• Relieve or improve symptoms
• Maintain function

Example:  Is adherence to the Mediterranean Diet associated with reduced risk of heart attack?

When you go to search the databases, you may not use all these terms in your search. For instance, you may start out using only the terms Mediterranean Diet and heart attacks.

• If you retrieve too many results, add more terms to your search, or add more specific terms.
• If you retrieve too few results, use fewer or more broad terms. 

Don't forget alternative or British spellings!

• Oxford Reference - British/American spelling differences
• Translation Clinic - Spellings differences in medical terms in British and American English
• Alamma - Medical terminology and variants of English

Learn more about putting together your search terms in the Boolean Operator section. 

Additional Reading:

Gallagher Ford L, Melnyk BM. The Underappreciated and Misunderstood PICOT Question: A Critical Step in the EBP Process. Worldviews Evid Based Nurs. 2019;16(6):422‐423. doi:10.1111/wvn.12408