PICOT Overview
PICOT is an acronym used to develop an answerable clinical question. In it's most common form, PICOT stands for:
P: Patient, Population, or Disease
I: Intervention, Exposure, or Topic of Interest
C: Comparison
O: Outcome
T: Time it takes to demonstrate an outcome
P: Patient, Population, or Disease
- Age
- Gender
- Ethnicity
- People with a diagnosis, disorder, or disease
- People on a specific unit (e.g. ICU) or receiving a specific treatment (e.g. mechanically ventilated)
I: Intervention, Exposure, or Topic of Interest
- Therapy
- Exposure
- Prognostic factor A
- Risk factor or risk behavior
C: Comparison issue or comparison topic of interest
- Alternative therapy
- Placebo
- No intervention, usual care
- Prognostic factor B
- Absence of risk factor or risk behavior
O: Outcome
- Outcome from therapy or intervention
- Risk of disease
- Accuracy of diagnosis
- Rate of occurrence of adverse outcomes
T: Time
- Time it takes for outcome to occur
- Observation time
Note: Many clinical questions do not include a time factor, so it is OK if your PICO does not have a T