Need help writing 3 nursing goals!!

llg, PhD, RN · Aug 28, 2008

My suggestion is that you rethink your approach to writing goals. Instead of using very general terms to identify what you hope to gain from the experience, use specific verbs (action words) to state what you are going to do, what you are going to accomplish, and what you are going to produce to show that you met that objective.

For example, many years ago when I did a preceptorship, one of the things I wanted to learn was how to do a good newborn assessment. So my official objective was that I was going to produce a newborn assessment tool for myself (based on a review of the literature) and perform head-to-toe assessments on 10 newborns. (The tool and my first few assessments were to be reviewed by my advisor before setting me loose on patients without supervision.)

Do you see the difference there? My general thought was "I want to learn about newborn assessment." My official object was more concrete and included things that could be evaluated by the faculty to document my mastery of the content.

As another example: Some students want to work on time management or organizational skills -- hard things to measure. They can say something like, "Stay on schedule managing the care for X number of patients with minimal assistance from my preceptor." They can then document that with a little worksheet that says whether or not meds and other treatments were done on schedule, etc.

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Aug 28, 2008

i will base my interventions for each client that i encounter at the truman street clinic on appropriate nursing jugdment and accurate assessment by the end of the third shift during my preceptorship experience.

her response to this was:

"you cannot measure appropriate nursing judgment" so she did not accept this goal.

i will base my interventions for each client that i encounter at the truman street clinic on appropriate nursing jugdment and accurate assessment by the end of the third shift during my preceptorship experience.

interventions are something you do to modify an existing situation which you found during assessment. the diagnosis merely puts a nice label on everything. that whole thing is called the nursing process and we all hope we perform it using appropriate nursing judgment. for a goal statement. however, i would list these things out:

i will base my nursing interventions for each client that i encounter at the truman street clinic by applying the nursing process to accurately assess their functional, physiological and psychosocial needs and diagnose their nursing problems

by the end of the third shift during my preceptorship experience.

i will be able to understand the indications, dosages, and adverse reactions/side effects, and schedule for the hiv/aids medications that are given to the each client throughout my entire preceptorship experience.

her response was: understand is not a measureable verb you cannot evaluate understanding unless you do something like take a test.....which is measurable because of the # of questions you would get correct/incorrect etc.

i will be able to understand the indications, dosages, and adverse reactions/side effects, and schedule for the hiv/aids medications that are given to the each client throughout my entire preceptorship experience.

"understand" is not an action verb which is the type of verb you look for in goal statements.

i will be able to state the indications, dosages, and adverse reactions/side effects, and schedule for the hiv/aids medications that are given to the each client throughout my entire preceptorship experience.

kittiebrackish1 · Aug 28, 2008

I do see how much more specific your goals are (I never thought of creating my own evaluation tool). I will try to re-work my goals. Thanks!!