Focusing Clinical Questions

Make your clinical questions easier to answer by focusing on one aspect at a time. It is often necessary to convert a complex question into a series of simpler “searchable” questions.Before starting this exercise, complete the Asking Clinical Questions exercises, or write down a recent clinical problem. Print several copies of the Clinical Question Worksheet to use during this exercise.

What inspired the question?
Was it a patient enquiry, a patient visit, personal curiosity, or something else?  This may be important to document when documenting a question as  part of a “practice reflection exercise” or “personal learning project” for study credit from a professional organization.

Who is the patient?
What information is important to the question? Consider the patient’s age, sex, family history, habits, profession or other relevant information.

What is the immediate problem?
What problem has the patient already encountered (clinical finding, disease)? Do they face a risk of some problem on the future (risk factor)?

What other problems are important?
What other problems are relevant to the immediate problem? What other problems in the patient’s medical history or environment have an impact on the immediate problem?

What intervention is being considered?
This is usually a diagnostic test or treatment. What alternatives exist? Is non-intervention a possibility?

What is the desired result?
What outcome is anticipated from the intervention? How will information change the management of the problem? Does this change the focus of the main question?  This step will often change the entire focus of the question.

Summarize the question
Summarize your question in one or two sentences. Include the most important information about the patient, problem, intervention and outcome. It may be necessary to break the original question down into several related questions.

Is the question clearly focused?
Is the question phrased so that you can easily search for a precise answer? Can you imagine a journal article or textbook section being written about the topic?

Test the question
Read the question to a colleague, or a staff member. Do they understand it? Do they have any suggestions for changing it?

Underline the key words
Underline the most important words in your question.  These will be the search terms used in your search strategy.

What’s Next?
You are ready to look for answers to your question. Before you proceed to Answering Clinical Questions, you might find it interesting to read Why Ask Questions?

Additional Resources

Focusing Clinical Questions
From the Center for Evidence-based Medicine, Oxford University, England