Setting goals with patients is an important step in helping them self-manage their own health-related behaviors. Experienced healthcare teams find that following the two basic principles described below helps patients have more early success, and small successes one after the other builds confidence and effective self-management.

High quality goals are patient-centered and behaviorally specific. Developing high quality goals increases the likelihood of early and sustained self-management success. Modeled after one team’s efforts, the rating scale below represents a simple way to assess if the goals we set are behaviorally specific.