Importance of Patient Goals in Evidence-Based Practice Treatment

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I would say extremely important.  Treatment goals need to be operationally described or operationally defined.  In other words, if you say the treatment goal is to improve the individual’s motor function, it has to be much more refined.  Treatment goal should be very specific and of course be measurable.  One of the aspects I think that is very important as a researcher, is that you define everything, every single treatment goal by an outcome measure.  By doing that, you are able to amass data and demonstrate to everyone that we have improved this person.  This child has improved because the ADL scores have increased.  This child’s attention span has increased from 10 minutes to a half hour.  All of those things are important data.  Treatment goals should be attached to outcome measures.