Transform Patient Care with SMART Goals
Are Your Patient Goals More Than Just Paperwork?
Many healthcare providers find themselves writing patient goals as a routine task, but then rarely refer back to them for guidance. If this resonates with you, it’s time to rethink your approach.
Effective goal writing can be a powerful tool for patient care.
By writing clear, SMART goals, you can:
- Focus your treatment: Prioritize interventions that directly address your patient’s needs.
- Measure progress: Track your patient’s improvement and adjust your plan as needed.
- Improve YOUR clinical skills: By tracking your patients progress (or lack of progress) and then holding yourself accountable to this, you can determine if what you are doing is effective or irrelevant.
This course will equip you with the skills to:
- Write goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).
- More clearly see the process of establishing, writing, and prioritizing clinical goals.
- Use goals to hold yourself accountable for your patients’ outcomes.
Don’t let your patient goals become just another checkbox. Invest in this essential skill and unlock the full potential of the goal writing process for both you and your patients.
CEU Requirements:
At the conclusion of the course – once you have completed the course work, passed the quiz and completed the exit assessment (YES, YOU HAVE TO DO ALL 3) you will receive 1.5 Category A CEU.
Knowledge Gap:
There is often a disconnect when following the SMART goal format when writing patient goals. This has led to goals being written to the level that they meet the needs of insurance companies, but serve no clinical purpose (as is evident by clinicians that are not aware of the clinical goals of the patient at every patient interaction).
Learning Objectives:
- Attendees will be able to recognize and describe in detail each of the 5 components of an appropriately written SMART goal.
- Attendees will be able to compose clinical goals that meet the expectation of all 5 SMART components.
- Attendees will be able to analyze goals that have been written and determine if they meet the SMART template expectations.
Clinical Bottom Line:
Properly written goals allow the clinician to gauge the progress of their patient as well as the quality of their clinical interventions, but only if the goals are written correctly. This course will provide healthcare providers the skillset necessary to follow the SMART goal framework within the context of patient care so that writing goals serves a clinical purpose and is not just another administrative task to check off during the evaluation process.
Course Instructor
