PICO, Keywords, and MeSH Subject Headings
PICO Framework
Used to frame and answer a clinical or health care related question. The PICO acronym stands for P - patient, problem or population; I - intervention; C - comparison, control or comparator; O - outcome.
PubMed Health Glossary (Source: Wikipedia)
Related terms: PICOT, PICOS, PICOTS
PICO acronym for the model of a clinical question for a search strategy or systematic review of healthcare intervention PubMed Health
What is MeSH?
MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) is the NLM controlled vocabulary thesaurus used for indexing articles for PubMed. You can use these in combination with keywords in your searching.
MeSH is:
- an acronym for Medical Subject Headings.
- the U.S. National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary (thesaurus).
- a vocabulary that gives uniformity and consistency to the indexing and cataloging of biomedical literature.
- a distinctive feature of MEDLINE: Description of the Database.
- arranged in a hierarchical manner called the MeSH Tree Structures.
- updated annually.
MeSH Vocabulary includes four types of terms:
- Headings
- Subheadings
- Supplementary Concept Records
- Publication Characteristics (or Types)