The PICOT question is a generally accepted framework for conducting research or clinical practice projects. Essentially, PICOT encompasses the population, intervention, comparison, outcome, and timeframe of a particular project or research (Lira & Rocha, 2019). Thus, in order to create a well-developed foundation for the capstone project, this paper will review each of these categories to formulate a PICOT question that would address a specific patient population and intervention.
Population
The population of the project in question is not limited to a specific health condition, as the primary goal of the research is to demonstrate the correlation between nurses’ EBP training and patient outcomes such as satisfaction and well-being. For this reason, the target population of the project will be the newly admitted patients that come to an adult general hospital. In such a way, some of the patients will be communicating with the nurses undergoing EBP training, whereas others will be taken care of by nurses from the control group. In order to avoid heterogeneity of the data, the patient surveys will be anonymous and directed solely at their experience from nursing care and communication.
Intervention
The primary intervention to the nursing practice introduced during this project will be the EBP training on practice implementation and research. This intervention is correlated with the patients’ experience due to its impact on nurses’ perception of their work. Thus, whereas lack of EBP implementation in the workplace contributes to the lack of personal accomplishment and burnout syndrome among nurses, burnout affects the quality of providing health care services to the patients (Rodríguez-Nogueira et al., 2021; Tawfik et al., 2019). Hence, the intervention in question is the conduction of a three-day intensive training on EBP research and implementation in the workplace.
Comparison
In order to appraise the results of the intervention, a part of the nurses in the setting will be allocated to a control group. The participants of the control group will not receive training on the EBP, yet the patients examined by this group will also be surveyed on the matter of patient satisfaction. For ethical concerns, both intervention and control groups will not be informed that the patients will be surveyed until the end of the study, as this knowledge may create a series of implicit biases to the study’s objectivity. At the end of the study, the results of the intervention and control groups will be analyzed and compared.
Outcome
Considering the high level of correlation between EBP implementation, nursing burnout, and the quality of patient care provided, the outcome of the study should demonstrate better patient satisfaction in the intervention group. Hence, the project will operate the following hypotheses:
- H0 = There is no correlation between the EBP research and implementation training among nurses and the level of patient satisfaction.
- H1 = There is a correlation between the EBP research and implementation training among nurses and the level of patient satisfaction.
Time
Given the limited resources provided for the study, the overall timeframe of the study will take approximately four to eight weeks. This period encompasses preliminary research for the project, material preparation, proper intervention, collection of surveys, analysis, and summary of the project result. The intervention per se will preliminarily take three days, presenting an intensive training course on EBP for the nurses in the intervention group.
Question Formation
Hence, given the aforementioned data, the final wording of the project PICOT question is as follows:
- In the newly admitted patients, does nurses’ better knowledge of EBP research and implementation contribute to better satisfaction with the service provided, compared to the control group of nurses with no EBP training?
This question aims at estimating the effect EBP has on the patient practice and nurses’ professional competency. Moreover, it will contribute to the knowledge of how the sense of accomplishment motivates nurses to provide better care to patients.
References
Lira, R. P. C., & Rocha, E. M. (2019). PICOT: Imprescriptible items in a clinical research question. Arquivos Brasileiros de Oftalmologia, 82(2). Web.
Rodríguez-Nogueira, Ó., Leirós-Rodríguez, R., Pinto-Carral, A., Álvarez-Álvarez, M., Morera-Balaguer, J., & Moreno-Poyato, A. R. (2021). Examining the association between evidence-based practice and burnout among Spanish physical therapists: A cross-sectional study. Journal of Personalized Medicine, 11(8), 805. Web.
Tawfik, D.S., Scheid, A., Profit, J., Shanafelt, T., Trockel, M., Adair, K.C., Sexton, J.B., & Ioannidis, J.P. (2019) Evidence relating health care provider burnout and quality of care: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Annals of Internal Medicine, 171(8), 555-567. Web.