In today’s literature the term “evidence-based” frequently appears in the titles of many professional journal articles. In clinical settings, emphasis is being placed on evidence-based practice by regulatory agencies and quality improvement efforts. Even though this term is batted around as common knowledge now, I find that many people still do not understand what all it entails. Many nursing curriculums are placing an emphasis on evidence-based practice, but those of us who graduated before the popularity of the concept of evidencebased practice need to learn about it through experience or individual readings. In my teaching experience in an RN to BSN completion program I have found that many RNs do not have the opportunity to incorporate evidence in their practice because the mechanisms are not in place in their clinical settings. For those RNs, their first opportunity to work through the evidence-based practice process is in the classroom. For that reason, this column is the beginning of a series about the steps in the evidence-based practice process. When being asked to write a paper or give a presentation, the most difficult task is often the first step of developing a topic idea. The same is true when beginning an evidencebased project. The most difficult task may be the formation of a concise question that clearly states what is being explored and contains words that are searchable. This column introduces my version of the steps in the evidence-based decisionmaking process and focuses on the first step, formulating the searchable question.