What is the difference between background, foreground and clinical questions?
Answer
A clinical question can either be a background or foreground question. Background questions are general knowledge questions, such as "what is the temperature of a fever?". Background questions ask for information that is usually not patient specific. Answers to background questions can often be found in textbooks, UpToDate, or Wikipedia (use it wisely) or other encyclopedias and dictionaries.
In contrast, foreground questions are specific questions about a patient-specific scenario. These are not general questions. For example, "Are probiotics effective at treating recurrent UTIs in women?" is a foreground question - notice how specific it is? Foreground questions are best answered by databases and point of care tools.
We care about the difference between background and foreground questions because of where we will go to find the information that will effectively answer our question.