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Evidence-Based Practice: ASK

Step 1: Ask the question

The first step in the evidence-based practice process is to formulate a clinical question.

The clinical question should be relevant to the patient or the problem and formulated so as to help you search for an answer.

There are tools that help make this process easier. These "mnemonics" or "frameworks" help you to:

  • put together the parts of the clinical question
  • identify the key concepts that need to be in articles that will help answer the question
  • formulate your search strategy.

These mnemonics include PICO and SPIDER, and the lesser-known and lesser-used PEO, SPICE, and ECLIPSE.

So, this section covers:

Charles Sturt University acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands on which its campuses are located, paying respect to Elders, both past and present, and extend that respect to all First Nations Peoples.

Charles Sturt University is an Australian University, TEQSA Provider Identification: PRV12018. CRICOS Provider: 00005F.