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Identify Goals and Desired OutcomesIdentify Goals and Desired Outcomes
Having chosen the priority needs you want to address, you are now ready to get more specific about your goals and desired outcomes for the population of focus. Clear goals and desired outcomes are important for knowing where you are heading, making sure all partners are on the same page, focusing efforts on what is most crucial, and measuring your impact. Why identify goals and outcomes?Clear goals and outcomes will help you select the most appropriate techniques or processes that have been identified through research and/or consensus among experts to be the most effective (sometimes called "best practices"). They will also help you specify how you will determine whether you are making progress. What are goals and desired outcomes? Goals reflect what impacts you hope to achieve in the future—they provide the vision of the work you are doing and state what is to be accomplished. Goals are broad statements that often have multiple strategies associated with achieving them. A goal should be based on some of the needs that you identified in Step 1. Linked to a goal, a desired outcome describes how the target population might change based on successful completion of your strategies. Typically, outcomes are related to changes in:
Desired outcomes make goals more concrete, so that by changing these outcomes, you get closer to the goal that you set. How to develop goals for your community? The goals that you identify should be justified by the priority needs that you identified as a result of your Step 1 work. A goal is a statement for how you would like your community to change as a result of the program that you implement, so do not phrase your goal statement as an activity. "Implement a home visiting program" is not a useful goal statement; it does not describe how your work will improve the lives of children and families. And remember—you do not need a lot of goals. One or two good, clear goals will help you stay focused. Here are some examples of goals:
How to identify desired outcomes? A desired outcome is a statement that makes goals more concrete. To develop a useful set of desired outcomes (sometimes called objectives or outcome statements), you will need to describe what specific change(s) you hope to occur as a direct result of your program that will help you achieve your goals. The CDC has developed the concept of "SMART" outcomes (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2011). "SMART" can help you remember that a desired outcome should be:
You should have at least one desired outcome for each goal, and you can have more than one. The desired outcomes should be logically linked to support the attainment of the goal(s). It might be helpful to take a look back at the Community Needs Assessment you completed in Step 1 and note the measure availability for your community in order to specify your outcomes and how they will be measured, for whom, and by when. Tip 1-2 provides some examples of desired outcomes for each of the goals listed above. Tip 2-1. Sample Goals and Desired Outcomes
Identifying your community's goals and desired outcomesIn this section, we present the Goals and Desired Outcomes Tool, which will help you through the process of identifying goals and desired outcomes for your work. After the tool you will find the Townville example, which you can use to help guide you in filling the tool out yourself. Townville Example 2-1. Townville's Goals and Outcomes Based on their needs assessment, Townville's community coalition was already pretty certain about their goals. Given increased rates of child maltreatment in Townville, as well as high rates of hospitalization for injury, the community coalition selected two goals for Townville: (1) reduced child abuse and neglect and (2) reduced hospitalizations for injury among young children. Identifying outcomes was a little trickier: What measurable outcomes could they set? By using their work in Step 1, Townville's community coalition realized that reducing substantiated cases of child abuse and improving parents' knowledge of home safety precautions were important outcomes. Meeting these outcomes would help them get closer to their goals. How could they measure their progress toward these outcomes? The coalition had already looked at some statistics about their community, so they knew the types of measures that they could use, including using data from their local Child Protective Services (CPS) department. Because they wanted parents' behaviors in the home to change to help protect children against unintentional injury, they decided that parents' understanding of in-home safety would have to change, and that they would have to assess this using a parent survey.
Tip 2-2. Data Collection Methods for Measuring Desired Outcomes
Adapted from Hannah, McCarthy, & Chinman, 2011. Checklist 2-1. Completion of Step 2 When you finish working on this step, you should have done the following:
Before moving on to Step 3Now you are ready to take the information you developed in Steps 1 and 2 and use it to help you develop more of the details of your program planning and implementation. The next four GTO-HV steps (3 through 6) lead you through selecting the best evidence-based approaches to achieve your goals and desired outcomes. In these steps, you will review your program choices for the program that is most compatible with (Step 4) your local area and make sure you have the organizational capacity (Step 5) you need to actually carry out your chosen activities.
Which of the following should be included in a goal statement nursing?-A goal statement should include a subject, an action verb, a performance criterion, a target time, and special conditions if needed. -For every nursing diagnosis, you must state one "essential" goal—one that, if achieved, would demonstrate problem resolution or improvement.
What are the 5 main components of a care plan?What Are the Components of a Care Plan? Care plans are structured as a five-step framework: assessment, diagnosis, outcomes and planning, implementation, and evaluation.
What are the four types of outcomes in nursing?After nursing interventions are implemented, the nurse will evaluate if the outcomes were met in the time frame indicated for that patient.. Specific.. Measurable.. Attainable/Action oriented.. Relevant/Realistic.. Timeframe.. Which of the following involves setting priorities writing goals desired outcomes?Planning involves: setting priorities, identifying patient-centered goals and expected outcomes, prescribing individualized nursing interventions.
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