Nursing

From the staff development bookshelf: How to set goals for improvement

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, July 22, 2011

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education!

When setting goals, use the SMART guide. Goals should be: Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound.

Goal-setting theory affirms that in order to drive humans to put forth effort, goals must be clear, challenging, and agreed upon.

Goals that are clear should have a metric and a date assigned to them; if that is not the case, the goal should be behavioral and leave no room for ambiguity. An example of a behavioral goal (with no metric attached) is shown as follows:

  • Clear goal: develop and promote at least one nurse before 12/31 of this year
  • Ambiguous goal: develop your staff for leadership positions


The clear goal leaves no room to wonder what you need to shoot for. It gives you a target to shoot for and will likely motivate you to get to work thinking about how you are going to achieve the goal. It will cause a behavior change in you that is focused, versus the ambiguous "goal" of developing your staff, which might lead you to some actions that are diffuse (all staff attend a leadership workshop) or none at all.

Not all goals include metrics. You might have a goal to complete your master's of nursing degree by January 1 of next year. Although there is no metric, you will certainly know when you have met your goal since this statement meets all the other criteria for a SMART goal. It is specific, your diploma will be your measurement, it is achievable (assuming you have your bachelor of science and course work toward your master of science [MS] started, etc.), relevant, and time-bound.

Source: Book excerpt adapted from Lead: Becoming an Effective Coach and Mentor to Your Nursing Staff by Patty Kubus, RN, MBA, PhD.

Readers of Staff Development Weekly receive a 10% discount on this book! Just enter source code EB102930A at checkout. Click here to visit www.hcmarketplace.com.



Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education!

Most Popular

Related Articles