Evidence for Nursing : PICO Framework

EVIDENCE FOR NURSING
Assessment Item 1: Finding the evidence Weight: 15% of overall mark for
the subject
Submission: 5 pm, Wed 01st April 2020, through Turnitin.
Task: Using clinical case scenarios, you will develop a question to address the area of clinical
uncertainty. You will use the PICO framework to build a structured and searchable question
and build a systematic literature search.
Important information before you begin:
 You need to develop your PICO questions before you begin your search in the database.
 Review the learning activities from Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3 to help you develop
your PICO question and develop search strategies.
 Use additional library drop-in sessions to get further help with this assessment.
How to do this assessment:
1. Choose one of the provided clinical case scenarios below.
2. Using the information from the case scenario, answer the questions in Assessment one
templet to plan for your systematic database search.
3. Enter your search terms into Embase (Elsevier Platform) and complete a search.
4. Take a screenshot of final search and paste it into the end of this document (see the
example screenshot on the last page).
Choose one of the following case scenarios to guide your work in Assessment one
Depression scenario
You are a community mental health nurse in Sydney. In a recent review of referrals to your
service, it was noted that there has been a large number of clients referred for treatment of
depression. The treatment provided by your service for these clients is antidepressant
medication.
You are aware that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is offered as an alternative or adjunct
to medication in other mental health services. Your team is open to change and it is decided
to search for evidence of an optimal care for these clients.
What is the effectiveness of cognitive behaviour therapy in treatment of
depression compared to antidepressant administration?
Breast Cancer
As a new registered nurse, you are working in a community health center. One of your clients
asks you about the effectiveness of screening for breast cancer. She states that she has
received mixed recommendations about the regular mammography for early detection of
breast cancer and its usefulness on reducing death rate from this disease. You are interested
to search for the available evidence on this topic.
Assessment Item 1: Finding the evidence Page 1

ASSESSMENT ONE: SUBMISSION TEMPLATE
Please complete your assessment activities in the following pages and
submit this into Turnitin:
 PICO Worksheet
 A print screen of your search (must be readable in Turnitin).
PICO Worksheet – Development of PICO and terms to be used in search (2 marks)
1. Use the following categories to help define your problem and what you are looking at in
simple terms
PICO: Patient/Problem/Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome.
(Remember to
use your readings to help you if you are unsure)
Patient/Problem: Depression
Intervention: Cognitive therapy
Comparison: administration of antidepressant
Outcome: treatment of depression
2. Write down your PICO question (1 mark):
What is the effectiveness of cognitive behaviour therapy in treatment of depression compared
to antidepressant administration?
3. What type of clinical question do you think this PICO question is? (0.5 mark)
Qualitative.
4. What kind of study/studies do you think would best answer your question? You can also
refine your search based on study types if you have a lot of papers (0.5 mark).
Literature review, Qualitative research , publications and journals.
Now that you have decided on WHAT you will be searching, you need to put
down a plan of HOW you will search for your articles. This helps you and
others to see how you got your evidence and how you made sure you got
the best evidence to help you decide on your clinical action.
5. The table below will help you to think of search terms that you need to look up when
searching for evidence– this is part of basic planning for a database search (2 marks).
We ask you to look up alternative terms because sometimes articles from health systems call
things different names – for example, in Australia we sometimes use the term ‘community
nurses’, but in the UK they often talk about ‘district nurses’ – if you only searched under
‘district nurse’ you’d miss all the articles which used the other term – you would be missing
some of the picture! You can find alternative terms by googling synonyms or by looking in
your textbooks.
Assessment Item 1: Finding the evidence Page 2