In healthcare, the primary goal of care is a basic concept that guides all medical practices and interventions. It refers to the general objective or purpose of medical treatment and patient care activities. Using SMART objectives as part of care coordination can establish a good relationship between the care manager or doctor and the patient. It improves communication and collaboration, while demonstrating self-management skills, such as the setting of objectives.
We identified a consensual and operational definition that can facilitate communication about serious illnesses between patients, families and doctors and provide a framework for researchers to develop interventions to improve care that are in line with objectives. Goal scores are based on the number of goals met with SMART criteria, and lower scores indicate lower quality goals. This included two preliminary scores of ten goals scored by the same two researchers, comparing the scores and analyzing the discrepancies until both scorers felt comfortable applying the tool in the same way. Prior to the intervention, pharmacists' confidence or experience in planning and documenting SMART objectives was not measured.
Currently, research on the best way to plan health goals is limited, with few standardized processes for developing, recording and evaluating goals. To successfully achieve the primary objective of health care, different strategic approaches must be employed. There was a great deal of variation in the way pharmacists documented objectives, which sometimes made it difficult to apply the evaluation tool and could have caused errors in scoring. SMART objectives allow care teams to move from provider-centered instruction to participation focused on the patient.
Development of goals, objectives and performance indicators for community health improvement plans (PDF) National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO). The phrase “goals of care” is increasingly common in health literature related to patients with serious illnesses. Because research on the use of SMART goal planning in mental health recovery is limited, more research is needed to identify which elements of the SMART acronym are most appropriate to help users of services receiving an SPMI achieve their desired results when they receive support in community-based primary care settings. In addition, this evaluation identified that there was a lack of detail in the record of most of the objectives. Research on the effectiveness of SMART objectives in healthcare and care coordination demonstrates the value of a concrete, patient-centered approach.
During the training, emphasis was placed on understanding the lived experience with mental illness, exploring strategies to promote behavior change and improve physical health, and adopting a collaborative, strength-based approach to goal planning. The goals were evaluated using the SMART Goal Assessment Method (SMART-GEM) tool to determine to what extent each documented goal met the SMART criteria.
