Formulate a search

Searching for evidence and applying it to your practice are important skills to master.

This guide builds upon your prior knowledge gained in 1st year through HLT1RAE, and will introduce you to a new way of searching as well as key databases for health.

The Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) process can be described as a series of five steps. The steps are sometimes given different names but all describe the following:

• Ask - convert your information needs into an answerable clinical question
• Acquire - find the best evidence to answer your clinical question
• Appraise - critically appraise the evidence for it validity, impact and applicability
• Apply - integrate the evidence with clinical expertise, the patient's values and circumstances, and information from the practice context
• Assess - evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency with which steps 1-4 were carried out and think about ways to improve your performance of them next time (Hoffman, 2013, pp. 7-11)

This main focus of this guide is on Ask & Acquire - formulate an answerable question and find the best evidence for your question.

Forming an answerable question is the first step in evidence-based practice. To make it easier to find an answer, time needs to be spent on structuring and refining your question. A useful process is to break your question into parts using a search mnemonic.

Search frameworks

• Search frameworks or concept maps (e.g. PICO) help you focus and break down your research question or scenario into concepts
• Some frameworks are more suitable for particular types of studies (e.g. quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods etc.)

Why use them?

• To help identify key concepts
• To find relevant results/evidence
• Provides an opportunity to brainstorm

When to use them?

• At university when you are looking for evidence to support your assignments
• In practice when supporting patients or clients

Whilst structuring your question using a search framework it is an important aspect of Evidence Based Practice, it may not be necessary to include all of the concepts in your search. Only use those concepts that can be clearly defined and translated into search terms.

PICO is a search framework mostly used for quantitative research.

PICo can be used for qualitative questions.

PIER is a popular tool used in occupational therapy for qualitative research.