Excerpts

Sample excerpt. Preview only – please do not copy

Chapter 9: Goal Setting to Plan and Evaluate Memory Rehabilitation

What Are Goals?

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary (1999) defines a goal as “the object of a person’s ambition or effort; a destination; an aim” (p. 505). Ylvisaker and Feeney (2000) suggested that “rehabilitation needs to involve personally meaningful themes, activities, settings and interactions.” Wade (1999), discussing rehabilitation goals in particular, indicated that “a goal is the state or change in state that is hoped or intended for an intervention or course of action to achieve” (p. 2). In practice, for our purposes, a goal is something the individual in receipt of and participating in rehabilitation wants to achieve, and subsequent actions will be relevant and meaningful to this person when they reflect his or her longer term aims. Although other people, who may be family members or therapists involved in the particular therapy program, may help in the achievement of goals by their efforts and support, their actions in this process are not regarded as goals.

Houts and Scott (1975) and McMillan and Sparkes (1999) proposed several principles of the goal- planning approach to rehabilitation. First, the patient should be involved in setting goals. Second, the goals set should be reasonable and client centered. Third, they should describe the patient’s behavior when a goal is reached. Fourth, the method to be used in achieving the goals should be presented in such detail that anyone reading the plan would know what to do. McMillan and Sparks summarized the principles of Houts and Scott and added to them, suggesting that goals should

(1) be client centered,

(2) be realistic and potentially attainable during admission,

(3) be clear and specific,

(4) have a definite time deadline, and (5) be measurable.