CHAPTER 4
Building a PICO search strategy
After identifying keywords that reflect your topic of interest,1 you need to use them to search for articles by building a ‘query’ more commonly known as a search string/strategy.
Successful search strategies are usually highly structured and built around a PICO framework. Population Intervention Comparison Outcome (PICO) frameworks help the searcher group search terms into thematic groups. PICO is very good at identifying medical literature where systematic reviewing is common, this is …