Assignment: Evidence-Based Project, Part 3: Advanced Levels of Clinical Inquiry and Systematic Reviews

Your quest to purchase a new car begins with an identification of the factors important to you. As you conduct a search of cars that rate high on those factors, you collect evidence and try to understand the extent of that evidence. A report that suggests a certain make and model of automobile has high mileage is encouraging. But who produced that report? How valid is it? How was the data collected, and what was the sample size?

In this Assignment, you will delve deeper into clinical inquiry by closely examining your PICO(T) question. You also begin to analyze the evidence you have collected.

To Prepare:

• Review the Resources and identify a clinical issue of interest that can form the basis of a clinical inquiry.


• Develop a PICO(T) question to address the clinical issue of interest you identified in Module 2 for the Assignment. This PICOT question will remain the same for the entire course.


• Use the key words from the PICO(T) question you developed and search at least four different databases in the Walden Library. Identify at least four relevant systematic reviews or other filtered high-level evidence, which includes meta-analyses, critically-appraised topics (evidence syntheses), critically-appraised individual articles (article synopses). The evidence will not necessarily address all the elements of your PICO(T) question, so select the most important concepts to search and find the best evidence available.


• Reflect on the process of creating a PICO(T) question and searching for peer-reviewed research.

The Assignment (Evidence-Based Project)

Part 3: Advanced Levels of Clinical Inquiry and Systematic Reviews

Create a 6- to 7-slide PowerPoint presentation in which you do the following:

• Identify and briefly describe your chosen clinical issue of interest.


• Describe how you developed a PICO(T) question focused on your chosen clinical issue of interest.


• Identify the four research databases that you used to conduct your search for the peer-reviewed articles you selected.


• Provide APA citations of the four relevant peer-reviewed articles at the systematic-reviews level related to your research question. If there are no systematic review level articles or meta-analysis on your topic, then use the highest level of evidence peer reviewed article.


• Describe the levels of evidence in each of the four peer-reviewed articles you selected, including an explanation of the strengths of using systematic reviews for clinical research. Be specific and provide examples.