The first step of the process is to evaluate a nursing practice environment to identify a nursing problem in the clinical area. When a nursing problem is discovered, the nurse researcher develops a clinical guiding question to address that nursing practice problem. For this assignment, you will create a clinical guiding question know as a PICOT question. The PICOT question must be relevant to a nursing practice problem. To support your PICOT question, identify six supporting peer-revised research articles, as indicated below. The PICOT question and six peer-reviewed research articles you choose will be utilized for subsequent assignments. Use the “Literature Evaluation Table” to complete this assignment. Note: To assist in your search, remove the words qualitative and quantitative and include words that narrow or broaden your main topic. For example: Search for diabetes and pediatric and dialysis. To determine what research design was used in the articles the search produced, review the abstract and the methods section of the article. The author will provide a description of data collection using qualitative or quantitative methods. Systematic Reviews, Literature Reviews, and Metanalysis articles are good resources and provide a strong level of evidence but are not considered primary research articles.  Therefore, they should not be included in this assignment. While APA style is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected, and documentation of sources should be presented using APA formatting guidelines, which can be found in the APA Style Guide, located in the . This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

The first step in the research process is to evaluate the nursing practice environment and identify a nursing problem within the clinical area. Once a nursing problem is identified, the next step is to develop a clinical guiding question, also known as a PICOT question, which will address the nursing practice problem. In this assignment, you will be creating a PICOT question that is relevant to a nursing practice problem, and supporting it with six peer-reviewed research articles.

To begin, it is important to understand what a PICOT question is. PICOT stands for Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, and Time. A PICOT question is a research question that specifies the key components of a study, helping to focus and guide the research process.

To create a PICOT question, you will need to consider each component. Population refers to the individuals or group of individuals that you are interested in studying. For example, if your nursing practice problem involves managing pain in postoperative patients, your population would be postoperative patients.

The intervention component of the PICOT question refers to the treatment or intervention that you are examining. In the case of managing pain in postoperative patients, the intervention could be a specific pain management regimen or medication.

The comparison component represents the alternative or control treatment that is being compared to the intervention. In our example, the comparison could be a different pain management regimen or medication, or perhaps no intervention at all.

The outcome component of the PICOT question refers to the specific outcome or outcomes that you are interested in measuring or assessing. For example, the outcome could be the level of pain reported by the patients, or the rate of adverse effects from the pain management intervention.

Finally, the time component specifies the timeframe over which the outcomes will be measured. This could be a specific time frame, such as 24 hours postoperatively, or it could be a specific length of time that the patients will be followed up, such as 3 months.

Once you have a clear understanding of each component of the PICOT question, you can start formulating your question. Your PICOT question should be clear, concise, and specific. It should also be answerable through research and relevant to your nursing practice problem.

Now that you have formulated your PICOT question, you need to support it with six peer-reviewed research articles. Peer-reviewed research articles are scholarly articles that have been evaluated by other experts in the field before they are published. These articles provide reliable and credible evidence to support your research question.

When searching for research articles, it is important to use specific keywords related to your nursing practice problem. You can start by removing the words qualitative and quantitative and include words that narrow or broaden your main topic. For example, if your nursing practice problem is related to diabetes management in pediatric dialysis patients, you could search for articles that include keywords such as diabetes, pediatric, and dialysis.

To determine the research design used in the articles, you will need to review the abstract and methods sections of the articles. The authors will provide a description of the data collection methods, indicating whether qualitative or quantitative methods were employed.

It is also worth noting that while systematic reviews, literature reviews, and metanalysis articles are valuable resources and provide a strong level of evidence, they are not considered primary research articles and should not be included in this assignment.

In summary, for this assignment, you will evaluate a nursing practice environment, identify a nursing problem, and create a PICOT question to address that problem. You will also find six peer-reviewed research articles that support your PICOT question. Your PICOT question and the research articles you choose will be used in subsequent assignments. It is important to use specific keywords, review the abstracts and methods sections of the articles to determine the research design used, and ensure that the articles are peer-reviewed and relevant to your research question.