What is the PICOT question?
In a twenty-year-old patient (P), does the use of narcotics (I) compared to alternative methods of pain relief (C), lead to less addiction (O) over the course of one year?
Define each element of the question below:
- P– (Patient, population, or problem): twenty-year-old patient
- I– (Intervention): the use of narcotics for treating pain
- C– (Comparison with other treatment/current practice): alternative methods of pain relief such as meditation and acupuncture may be a better option
- O– (Desired outcome): a decrease in the number of patients readmitted for pain control
- T– (Time Frame): one year
What is the practice issue/problem? What is the scope of the issue? What is the need for change?
Use of such narcotics as morphine and opium to relief pain may lead to addiction within a short period of time. Usually such drugs are prescribed to relief pain in patient with cancer and other serious disorders. It is also believed that a significant number of people prefer alternative medicine in various forms to manage pain. Although, alternative medicine is not so effective as pain-killers, it is more compatible for young adults to prevent and decrease addiction. Physicians tend to recommend alternative therapies such as mind-body therapy and acupuncture to the patients who are classified to be in the group of potential risk to be addicted to medicines.
What is the practice area?
- Clinical
- Education
How was the practice issue identified?
- Safety/risk management concerns
- Unsatisfactory patient outcomes
- Difference between hospital and community practice
What evidence must be gathered?
For the given research, appropriate scholar articles and evidence-based studies should be reviewed, as well as main trends in alternative medicine dealing with managing pain. Detailed review of alternative techniques should be conducted. The guidelines for using alternative techniques should be studied as well to detect their advantages and disadvantages. The opinion of experts should be included into this research to prove the effectiveness of the suggested techniques. Clinical expertise should be included to show the main trends in drug addiction caused by using medications for managing pain among young adults.
- Literature search
- Guidelines
- Expert Opinion
- Clinical Expertise
Search terms/How to narrow the search?
To narrow the search, such key words should be used: alternative medicine, drug addiction, medicine to relief pain, mind-body therapy.
The search should be conducted by using multiple databases and finding scientific evidence-based articles for the last five years, searching phrase should be clear, quotation marks for a phrase should be used to narrow the research.