NURS-FPX4030 Assessment 3 PICOT Questions and an Evidence-Based Approach Example
Preventive nursing focuses on the early detection of an illness and implementing interventions to stop the illness from occurring or progressing. In a hypothetical case scenario, a nurse had a hard time diagnosing surgical site infection using the warning signs of infection NURS-FPX4030 Assessment 3 PICOT Questions and an Evidence-Based Approach. The patient only had erythema and swelling at the incision site without fever, discharge, or pain.
His desire to prevent surgical site infection from occurring in his patient led to his doubt that the signs were not adequate to say for sure that his patient started to have a surgical site infection (SSI). SSIs are a major cause of long patient hospital stays, mortality, morbidity, and increased cost of treatment (Iskandar et al., 2019). Annually, there are more than 100000 cases of surgical site infections (National Healthcare Safety Network, 2022).
SSIs surveillance and prevention have been some of the strategies used to intervene to prevent the outcome of SSIs. This paper aims to formulate a clinical question, identify potential sources, and explain their findings to answer the clinical question NURS-FPX4030 Assessment 3 PICOT Questions and an Evidence-Based Approach.
Definition of Practice Issue
The scenario above involves a situation where the nurses need clinical or scientific evidence to make informed decisions about the patient. To ensure proper patient surveillance, he will need to identify and prevent SSI early in this patient.
An alternative way to diagnose SSI is through laboratory investigations. Like other infections, SSIs can cause inflammation that can be detected through blood testing. C-reactive protein (CRP) assays have been a good marker for inflammation in the body NURS-FPX4030 Assessment 3 PICOT Questions and an Evidence-Based Approach.
Its assay can suggest inflammation in the body in the setting of SSIs. However, surgery is also an iatrogenic process that can cause inflammation (Chijioke, 2019). As such, the use of CRP in SSI surveillance requires clinical evidence. The benefits of using this protein marker in surgical site infection can be ascertained through evidence-based practice.
Clinical Question
Having defined the clinical issue, the second phase of the John Hopkins EBP model is to research for evidence. This started with the formulation of a practice question. The practice question was formulated in a PICOT format NURS-FPX4030 Assessment 3 PICOT Questions and an Evidence-Based Approach.
The PICO question stated: “In postoperative adult patients (P), is C-Reactive Protein assay (I) compared with the use of clinical signs (C) more accurate in early diagnosis of surgical site infections (O)? In this PICO question, the population includes adult patients who have had significant surgeries during their inpatient stay in the hospital. The intervention is laboratory testing that measures the serum amount of CRP during this period after the surgery.
The comparison intervention will use clinical signs of inflammation, such as tenderness, discharge, swelling, redness, and hotness. The time element will not be included in this clinical practice question NURS-FPX4030 Assessment 3 PICOT Questions and an Evidence-Based Approach.
PICO approach will benefit the exploration of the clinical issue by providing the search terms and phrases. Using the PICO question will improve the specificity of the literature search, thus improving its relevance and credibility (Eriksen & Frandsen, 2018).
The conceptual clarity before the search will also improve through PICO as all elements, including comparisons, are declared before literature acquisition. The population, problem, and interventions are defined, thus making the framework of the literature search clearer. Therefore, the returned search results will be high-quality, high-level evidence (Eldawlatly et al., 2018). Finally, using PICO questions will reduce the time required to complete the search.
Evidence-based Sources
A literature search was performed from the Cochrane Library, Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and PubMed databases. These sources are authoritative and contain peer-reviewed resources, including but not limited to journal articles and books.
After the literature search, articles