Personal Professional Plan Help

[turbulent]

Hi!

I need some help on making a personal goal SMART (specific, attainable, realistic, time sensitive) I'm in my second semester, which is my Med/Surg clinical.

So my personal goal is to become more confident during interactions, because frankly, I'm still working on getting over some shyness.

For activities I have (and I only need 2):

Perform discharge education at least once a shift

Perform as much patient care as possible without help of the nurse.

But the next column is standards. The standard is what guides or provides the knowledge/information to do something correctly. It is what sets the "standard" for the specific skill or task. She wants us to write how we're going to prove that we are progressing toward your goal.

So what do you guys think? What are some good ways to measure this, besides obviously, just feeling more confident.

Should I re-word this goal to make it more concrete? Or decide on a new goal altogether?

Thanks so much

[LessValuableNinja]

I'm of the opinion that it should be rewritten to be more concrete. Something that is concrete is initiating patient interactions and preparing for/providing teaching. These can be measured by either happening or not happening. Another way to measure this would be to have your preceptor rate your current interactions with patients for specific things such as: confidence, knowledge when educating patients, and other similar things. You can have them rate you now, and have your goal be an increase by x number of points by the end of the semester. Generally a smart goal should be quantifiable, which means "probably is doing better than before" won't count. The yardstick needs to be seen as improving, so there needs to be a way to measure.

[AliNajaCat]

Re the pt teaching: You could search for articles about patient teaching and see what constitutes a comprehensive job-- including things like getting the patient to teach back to you to validate learning, have pt do return demos (if applicable), and so forth. These activities would require a higher level of interpersonal engagement than just reading off a pt teaching discharge page and would demonstrate your growth in that area.

The "provide as much care as possible" is a little nebulous. It might not be a good idea to provide a laundry list of tasks you want to demonstrate, because you can't be sure the opportunities to do them will present themselves while you're there. Think of something more concrete. Maybe something to do with admission assessments-- there are certainly standards for those, and the preceptor nurse could review your admission assessment(s) and critique them. Also an opportunity for more interpersonal interaction / growth c patient and staff.