Questions to think about:
How would you describe this population? (age, race, sex, healthy, risk factors, previous or current ailments, current medications, etc.)
How is the condition defined? (symptoms, presence and/or severity of disease, diagnostic test, etc.)
Are there any patients who should be excluded from this population? (healthy patients, patients above or below a certain threshold, etc.)
Questions to think about:
What main intervention, treatment, diagnostic test, procedure, prognostic factor, or exposure are you considering?
Are you interested in a drug treatment? Medical procedure? Surgical procedure? Diagnostic test?
For drug interventions, what is the dosage, frequency, duration, and method of administration?
Questions to think about:
What is the main alternative to your intervention? (A different dosage of the same drug? Placebo or alternative drugs? Another medical or surgical procedure?)
For diagnostic studies, is there a gold standard or another diagnostic tool with which to compare yours?
Questions to think about:
What are you hoping to accomplish, measure, improve, or affect?
Do you want to improve quality of life?
Are morbidity or mortality important issues to consider?
What are the harms of this treatment or test and its alternatives?
Some PICO questions include a T or an S at the end (PICOT, PICOS, PICOTS). The T usually stands for Type of study, Timeframe of study, or Type of question. The S can stand for Setting or Study Design.
For example, you may want to search for studies in the setting of nursing homes.