Ask | Acquire/Find | Appraise | Apply | A self evaluation

This step is very important. The more detailed and specific the clinical question, the better you search result.

To be well-designed, your question must directly apply to the case at hand and be focused and phrased in such a way to make retrieval of relevant published evidence possible.

In this case, let's focus on whether an insulin pump is the most appropriate treatment for Lucas.

There are two frameworks you can use for this - PICO(T) and PECOT

PICO

PICO is a popular framework used to make one sentence out of a scenario in preparation for searching for information.

P: Population/problem	What is the condition/disease or illness you are interested in and what are the characteristics which are similar to your patient? Be precise but brief
I/E: Intervention/Exposure	What is the main (new) intervention or exposure you want to include?
C: Comparison intervention	What intervention do you want to compare with the main intervention?
O: Outcome	What are you hoping to achieve? The outcomes should be those judged most important to patients or other decision makers

T Time may not be relevant You will usually have something in the P, I/E and O sections. You don't always need to have something in the C components.

Example

Now lets try and put our case into the PICO framework

P: Population/problem	Adolescent with type-1 diabetes
I/E: Intervention/Exposure	Insulin pump
C: Comparison intervention	Insulin injections several times a day
O: Outcome	Good blood sugar control

The standard format for a research question is:

Among [population] does [exposure] compared to [comparison] reduce/increase/affect [outcome] (over [time frame]).

Your resulting research question might look as follows:

Among adolescents with type-1 diabetes, does an insulin pump compared to insulin injections affect blood sugar control?