PICO is a state of mind

The PICO framework is a systematic way to identify important concepts in a case, and formulate a question for searching.

However, PICO is very relevant to patient and treatment scenarios, and some questions do not fit perfectly into the PICO format. For example, you may not have a specific comparison intervention, or may have multiple outcomes you are interested in. Do not worry about this!

The goal of PICO is to focus your topic, and your question can always be refined and changed.

Remember, no matter what type of resource you’ll ultimately use to look for answers, you should always start by applying PICO to your question so you can think about it strategically.