[re+think]

Patient goals.  These are the primary driving force behind physical therapy interventions.  But recently I began to wonder… why do they seem so one sided?  I had to re-evaluate how I was setting goals for my patients since coming into an outpatient setting after years of inpatient rehab.  There are very different objectives in the 2 settings.  In inpatient rehab, the goal is clear – get the patient home!  In outpatient, the goal can be much broader – I want to play tennis again, or very specific – I want to walk heel-toe.  I would write these goals for patients, along with the outcome measure-based goals for improved TUG times, FGA for balance, gait velocity, etc, but it never really felt like these goals were a real collaboration.  They felt more like my goals or ones I had to write out of obligation to the payer sources.  Of course, meeting the outcome-based goals would ultimately get the patient to move better and safer, but where’s the teamwork?  Where’s the salience?