The Literature Review. PICO and databases...eeek

30th May 2013

As part of our project Emily, Val and I are conducting a literature search. We are lucky that recently a guide has been developed by our organisation to do this. One of the ways to develop a good research question is to use the acronym PICO. There are lots of good sites explaining this however I am wondering how relevant it is to our research when using PICO is most effective for medical and patient based searches.
Here is a great link explaining how to use PICO to formulate a research question
http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/file/0011/85196/Finding-the-Evidence-1.swf
And here is another link to a worksheet for PICO http://www.usc.edu/hsc/ebnet/ebframe/PICO%20Worksheet%20SS.pdf

Well as a team and with the experience Val and Emily had in already trying to use PICO we came up with a great question and PICO for search terms.

THE PICO SYSTEM

WHAT DO I WANT TO KNOW (Practice Question):   What education do dsw need to support people with **

Area	Terms	Alternate Terms
Population	People with ** and living in supported accommodation	Alternate terms for each client group Residential services, residential facilities, institutions, group homes, facility, share home/house, nursing home, continuing care unit, transition unit, in home care, out of home care, respite care, day centre, day service, day programs
Intervention/ Exposure	Education or training for direct support workers	Staff education, staff training, competency based training, upskilling, professional development, learning needs, accreditation, disability support workers Support workers, residential worker, attendant carer, staff carer, personal care assistants, worker,
Comparison/Factor
Outcome/Observation	quality of life, stress, incident reports, wellbeing, job satisfaction, staff turnover, absenteeism, illness, least restrictive environment	Participation, independence,

 ** Autism or mental health conditions or BOC

So tonight I have tried to follow the guide and search databases. It was so so difficult to access the databases. Having access to a uni library I found it much easier to just get on to the cochrane database and do my search. Once I had access the searching was easy, the terms we had come up with helped and I started finding articles that seem a little bit relevant. So now lots of reading to do!