PICO Question: In fall risk patients, what is the effect of bed alarms when compared with patients not using bed alarms on fall incidents?
Part 1: Your 1-page proposal
The purpose of this section is to inform the reader (the instructor and hopefully others) as to why you are interested in this topic in both a professional and concise (i.e., no more than three paragraphs) manner. In this section, I want to see two important things:
- What is the clinical problem (that is amenable to nursing intervention), and why are you interested in it?
- Define the clinical problem.
- What is the significance of the problem?
- Background information to understand the context
- Select a problem within the group that is common to all students.
- Who is affected by the problem?
- How many are affected by the problem?
- What are the consequences if the problem goes “untreated”?
- Why should your colleagues care about the problem – what is the significance of their practice?
- What are the anticipated outcomes (benefits) if the problem goes away?
- It would be best to describe why you think this topic is particularly relevant to our practice and why it is an important study area.
- Do we need change, and why?
- Once a general problem area is described and validated (preferable statistical data), you can formulate a more precise, more focused question to guide the improvement work. Use the PICO format to guide the development of the practice improvement question (Do not write the PICO process only, include the review question). For example, if the focused clinical PICO question is “In a population of adult orthopedic post-surgical patients, what is the effect of a noise control intervention (compared with no intervention) on patient fatigue, pain, and satisfaction with care?
- The three paragraphs should end up with your statement. This EBP project aims to (use an action verb: examine, find, synthesize…and offer recommendations ……).