WHY BE SO SPECIFIC ABOUT THE QUESTION?

The next few slides present a real example from a recent patient...

Mrs. Johnson

• Mrs. Johnson is 78 years old, admitted with new onset atrial fibrillation.
• Patients with afib often are treated with warfarin to prevent embolic stroke.
• But Mrs. J. is elderly and unstable on her feet.
• You are worried about her falling while anticoagulated, causing a CNS bleed.

*deep venous thrombosis

You formulate the following questionto be answered by a literature search: “Should patients at risk of falls be anticoagulated?”

This question would be hard to answer- it is too general, and does not:

• describe the patient population
• state the underlying disease
• specify type or extent of anticoagulation
• state the outcome of interest

Let’s try to reformulate the question so that it is more amenable to answering from the literature……

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Created by John Wiecha, Department of Family Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine.
Website designed by Stefanie Curry, Department of Family Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine.
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