SMART Goal Setting
Issaiah Wallace
Chamberlain College of Nursing

With 33 million Americans utilizing healthcare services as a means to manage mental health conditions and illnesses, adequate delivery of mental healthcare, treatment, and practice is becoming increasingly more important in the American landscape of wellness (SAMHSA, 2004a). The mental health system continues to be a challenging area of healthcare, due to: increased usage of coercion into treatment, diversity in care delivery systems, an unevolved quality measurement mechanism, and a drastically different business and marketplace infrastructure. These factors added to the, already, present stigma associated with mental health, culminates into an extremely …show more content…

When considering the IOM’s core healthcare competencies relative to this topic, it seems that the most fitting one is: “employing evidence-based practice”. With only 27% of mental health cases adhering to evidence-based guidelines for practice and management of mental health conditions, it is clear that this competency is one in which the mental health field could strive for better compliance. By employing evidence-based practice, then the best outcome is maximized for the patient (Finkelman, 2012). As one seeks to derive a SMART goal from a core competency, it is important to pinpoint knowledge, skills, and attributes (KSA) as related to the competency. In this case, the appropriate KSA would be: utilizing evidence as a guide for practice. By guiding practice with evidence, then one can help decrease readmission rates and be sure that the patient is getting the best, evidence-based treatment tailored to his or her condition. This improves patient outcome, thereby improving patient satisfaction. This KSA is important across the professional spectrum and demands interdisciplinary compliance, whether one is a nurse, therapist, or psychiatrist. Keeping this in mind, the construction of a SMART goal should include a multidisciplinary perspective (Chamberlain College of Nursing, 2014). Coalescing all the hitherto mentioned data and concepts, my SMART goal is: I will work to assess adherence to evidence-based treatments in my facility’s psychiatric unit, by