procedure for updating the guideline is provided. Source: The AGREE Research Trust. (2009). Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation, AGREE II Instrument. Retrieved from http://www.agreetrust.org/index.aspx?o=1397 Table 1.1 4 Evidence-Based Geriatric Nursing Protocols for Best Practice Locating evidence to support development of protocols, guidelines, and reviews requires a comprehensive and systematic review of the published literature, following Steps 1 and 2. A search begins with Step 1, developing an answerable question, which may be in the form of a specific “foreground” question (one that is focused on a particular clinical issue), or it may be a broad question (one that asks for overview information about a disease, condition, or aspect of healthcare) (Flemming, 1998; Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2011; Straus et al., 2005) to gain an overview of the practice problem and interventions and gain insight into its significance. This step is critical to identifying appropriate search terms, possible synonyms, construction of a search strategy, and retrieving relevant results. One example of an answerable foreground question asked in this book is “What is the effectiveness of restraints in reducing the occurrence of falls in patients 65 years of age and older?” Foreground questions are best answered by individual primary studies or syntheses of studies, such as systematic reviews or metaanalyses. PICO templates work best to gather the evidence for focused clinical questions (Glasziou, Del Mar, & Salisbury, 2003). PICO is an acronym for population, intervention (or occurrence or risk factor), comparison (or control), and outcome. In the preceding question, the population is patients at risk of falling, 65 years of age and older; the intervention is use of restraints; the implied comparison or control is no restraints; and the desired outcome is decreased incidence of falls. An initial database search would consider the problem (falls) and the intervention (restraints) to begin to cast a wide net to gather evidence. A broader research query, related to a larger category of disease or problem and encompassing multiple interventions, might be “What is the best available evidence regarding the use of restraints in residential facilities?” (Griggs, 2009) General or overview/background questions may be answered in textbooks, review articles, and “point-of-care” tools that aggregate overviews of best evidence, for example, online encyclopedias, systematic reviews, and synthesis tools (BMJ Publishing Group Limited; The Cochrane Collaboration; Joanna Briggs Institute; UpToDate; Wolters Kluwer Health). This may be helpful in the initial steps of gathering external evidence to support the significance of the problem you believe exists prior to developing your PICO question and investing a great deal of time in a narrow question for which there might be limited evidence. Step 2, locating the evidence, requires a literature search based on the elements identified in the clinical question. Gathering the evidence for the protocols in this book presented the challenge to conduct literature reviews, encompassing both the breadth of overview information as well as the depth of specificity represented in high-level systematic reviews and clinical trials to answer specific clinical questions. Not every nurse, whether he or she is a clinical practitioner, educator, or administrator, has developed proficient database search skills to conduct a literature review to locate evidence. Beyond a basic knowledge of Boolean logic, truncation, and applying categorical limits to filter results, competency in “information literacy” (Association of College & Research Libraries, 2000) requires experience with the idiosyncrasies of databases, selection of terms, and ease with controlled vocabularies and database functionality. Many nurses report that limited access to resources, gaps in information literacy skills, and, most of all, a lack of time are barriers to “readiness” for EBP (Pravikoff, Tanner, & Pierce, 2005). For both the third and current edition of this book, the authors enlisted the assistance of a team of New York University health sciences librarians to assure a standard and efficient approach to collecting evidence on clinical topics. Librarians as