Physiotherapy: Searching & PICO

Havard, L. (2007) How to conduct an effective and valid literature search. Nursing Times; 103: 44, 32–33.
This article describes the key principles involved in conducting a literature search.

A literature search is an organised search for all the literature published on a topic. A well-structured search is the most effective
and efficient way to locate sound evidence, which may be found in books, journals, government documents and on the internet. Continue reading...

Planning your search

Before you start your search you'll need to develop an ‘answerable question” using PICO . A clinical question needs to be directly relevant to the patient or problem at hand and phrased in such a way as to facilitate the search for an answer. PICO makes this process easier. It is a mnemonic for the important parts of a well-built clinical question. It also helps formulate the search strategy by identifying the key concepts that need to be in the article that can answer the question.

Drafting your search strategy.

To do this you’ll need to:

1. Identify the key ideas or concepts.

2. Devise any synonyms or alternative terms for these concepts.

3. Consider limits for publication types, age, human, and evidence-based

4. You can map out your search using a logic grid

4. Search one term or concept at a time (search synonyms with OR) then combine concepts using AND

5. Critically appraise articles retrieved

6. Consider using a tool like ENDNOTE to manage your results.

How to use a Logic Grid

Let’s say you want to find articles on Physiotherapy treatment of shoulder pain in older patients. Below are some possible options for searching. As there are three distinct concepts involved in this search we will use three columns

You would need to OR the individual words in each column, and then AND the groups of words together - remembering to use parentheses to preserve the logic of your search.