NSW Brain Injury Rehabilitation Forum May 2011

 

Back to: PROGRAMME : ABSTRACTS : VIDEOS

 

Principles of goal design and their use
in a community brain injury rehabilitation team
STUART BROWNE, Royal Rehabilitation Centre Sydney, BIRU.

Part A

 

Part B

 

Title: Principles of goal design and their use within a community-based brain injury rehabilitation team

Author: Dr Stuart Browne, Brain Injury Rehabilitation Service, Royal Rehabilitation Centre Sydney

Type: Clinical practice initiative

There is extensive literature on the benefits of goal-directed rehabilitation, with general acceptance that goals should be specific, measureable, achievable, realistic, and time bound (SMART). Goal design often proves difficult, despite guidelines for better goal development. As part of an initiative to improve the quality of goals being written for clients of the Brain Injury Community Rehabilitation Team (BICRT), a set of Principles of Goal Design was established. The principles include: (1) goal achievement must result in a functional improvement for the client, a lessening of an impairment, or a reduction in a barrier; (2) goal achievement should be objectively observable by the clinician; (3) a goal can only be written after the client's current function has been fully assessed; (4) the issue that a goal is addressing needs to be clearly defined; and (5) goals should reflect the potential benefit of the therapy. These principles have resulted in the development of "issue templates" that represent hierarchical functional scales. The templates perform several roles, including greatly simplifying goal writing, objectively rating client function, and measuring the benefit of therapy.

The presentation will demonstrate the process of applying the principles and the use of issue templates in daily practice. Specific examples will be discussed, including challenging areas of goal writing.