Intervention or treatment of interest- the intervention can be a treatment, procedure, diagnostic test, and risk or prognostic factors. From the above case, you can identify pediatric population with otitis media, the age range, sex, presenting complaint, and history. Population or problem- addressing a specific population, its important characteristics and demographic information. pointed out that breaking the question into four components will facilitate the identification of relevant information.
The PICO (population, intervention, control, and outcomes) format is considered a widely known strategy for framing a “foreground” research question. These questions mostly compare the two, either two drugs or treatments or two diagnostic methods, etc. benefit for a patient or a group of patient are called “Foreground Questions.” These types of complex clinical questions are best answered by primary or pre-assessed studies in the literature. The patient-oriented questions involving interpretation of a therapy or disease and consideration of risk vs. These types of questions can be answered by going through review articles or text books. The general questions about a clinical problem or a disease are called “Background Questions.” These questions generally ask what, when, how, and where about the disease, disorder, or treatment for instance, “What is otitis media?” or “How does amoxicillin work?” etc. Several questions arise from this case which can be broadly classified into background and foreground questions. She wants to know if the prescribed amoxicillin is effective, or it can be substituted with another antibiotic because of its side effects such as frequent diarrhea. She is also concerned about the outcome associated with recurrent ear infections. She is worried about the consequences of the long-term antibiotic use. He has a history of recurrent ear infections, and his mother expresses a concern that he has been on the antibiotic amoxicillin for the past few weeks. A 2-year-old boy presents in an outpatient clinic with fever and severe pain in his right ear.