In the last tutorial, I gave you a brief overview of the CINAHL user interface on EBSCOhost. Starting from today, I'm going to show you how to actually run an effective search in CINAHL. We usually start our literature search with questions in mind, and we hope to find the answers to those questions in the literature. It is important that these questions be asked in a way that helps identify its key components. A well-built, focused, answerable question is key to developing good search strategies in the literature. Therefore, formulating your question becomes your first step in running a literature search in CINAHL, or any other structured database like CINAHL. the [PEE-COH], or [PIE-COH] format is widely used to formulate answerable questions and identify key terms for literature search. 'P' represents 'Patient', 'Population', or 'Problem'. Who are the patients? How would you describe them? What are their most important characteristics? Sometimes their gender, age, or ethnicity might also be relevant. What is the health concern? This may include the primary problem, disease, or co-existing conditions. 'I' represents 'Intervention', 'Prognostic Factor', or 'Exposure'. Which main therapeutic, diagnostic, or preventative intervention are you considering for the patient? What factor may influence the prognosis of the patient? What was the patient exposed to? 'C' represents 'Comparison of Intervention'. Is there a comparison to be evaluated against this intervention? What is the main alternative method of treatment or diagnosis? The comparison part is optional. Your question may not always have a specific comparison. 'O' represents 'Outcome' you would like to measure or achieve. What do you hope to accomplish, measure, improve, or affect? Is it the relief, or elimination, of the symptoms? Is it to improve certain test scores? Is it to prevent adverse effects? Now let's look at some examples, and how the PICO model can help identify key components in these questions. Question number one— Among children with minor head injury, does the use of CT scan versus other clinical findings affect the identification and diagnosis of intracranial hemorrhage? In this example, 'P' is 'children with minor head injury'. The main intervention, 'I' is 'the use of CT scan'. Comparison intervention, 'C', is 'other clinical findings'. In the outcome, 'O', is the 'identification and diagnosis of intracranial hemorrhage'. Question number 2— Does the vitamin D supplementation reduce the risk of falls in older hospitalized patients? In this example, the 'P' is 'older hospitalized patients. The main intervention, 'I' is 'vitamin D supplementation'. And the outcome, 'O' is 'reduce the risk of falls'. There is no 'C', comparison, in this example. The PICO format provides a good model for building focused questions for an effective literature search. It is especially good for answering therapy, treatment, or diagnosis-type of questions. The primary focus of this tutorial is CINAHL, so I only have time to talk just a little bit about constructing better questions. If you are interested in learning more on this topic, such as the various types of questions, how to match your questions with the various types of study designs in the literature, or simply to various library resources that can help you answer your questions, please refer to my "Find It Fast!" series of video tutorials, or contact your librarian for some training in Evidence-Based Practice, or EBP, Information Resources. Now that we know how to build a focused question, and identify the key components of the question using the PICO model, we can proceed to learn how to use CINAHL to find literature that can answer the question. In the next few tutorials, I'll be using our second example to demonstrate that in CINAHL. I'll see you next time.