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Nursing

a guide to resources for nursing research.

What is Evidence-Based Practice

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is the judicious use of the best research evidence (found in health sciences literature), clinical expertise (what the health care provider knows) and patient values (what the patient wants and believes) to create a plan of action regarding patient care.  Evidence-based practice is an umbrella term that covers evidence-based medicine, evidence-based dentistry, evidence-based public health, evidence-based nursing and etc.

Information about Practicing EBP

PICO for Clinical Questions

Healthcare professionals sometimes use the PICO or PICOT format to develop keywords for searching of clinical questions where:

P - Patient or Population or Problem

I - Intervention or prognostic factor of interest

C - Comparison to intervention

O - Outcome of interest

T - Type of Question (sometimes included)

For more information about forming and using a PICO question to search, please see the American Journal of Nursing article below.

Research Databases

Search for PICO keywords in these databases: 

CINAHL Complete This link opens in a new window

CINAHL®Complete is the world's most comprehensive nursing & allied health research database, providing full text for more than 1,300 journals indexed in CINAHL®. Of those, 822 are not found with full text in any version of Academic Search™, Health Source® or Nursing & Allied Health Collection™. This authoritative file contains full text for many of the most used journals in the CINAHL index, with no embargo

PubMed Database Advanced Search Builder

Search engine for the National Library of Medicine

Trip Medical Database

Choose "PICO" on the top of the search bar and input specific terms to locate clinical research evidence.

Evaluating Evidence

Helpful Videos