The EBM Process: Formulating a Clinical Question
Types of Clinical Questions

There are basically two types of clinical questions:

Background: Questions often asked early on when learning about a subject. These questions usually relate to background information. An example: “What is the physiology of the kidney?”
Foreground: Questions asked when the questioner has more experience and knowledge about a subject area. An example: “Are ACE inhibitors an efficacious treatment of diabetic patients with microabluminurea?”
Generally when a student progresses with a subject and gains more experience with it, his or her questions transition from more background to more foreground questions.
It is important for physicians to realize what kind of question they are asking because this will influence what type of resource will be able to help them find the answer.
- For example, if a medical student is just starting to learn about the kidney, she will likely be asking background questions that can best be answered by consulting a text book or review article. An Internal Medicine intern will likely be asking more foreground questions and will need to look for systematic review articles in internal medicine journals. A nephrology fellow will likely be asking almost exclusively foreground questions and may need to look at articles in the literature reporting the results of individual randomized controlled trials or even case series.

Types of Clinical Questions