Goal Setting Tips and Strategies for Healthcare Professionals

Healthful Vitality | 01/21/2020 | By Dr. Jyothi Shenoy | Goal Setting Tips and Strategies for Healthcare Professionals

Whether it is your career, or your personal life, or health; if there is one thing that can help you succeed, then it is goal setting. Let us discuss some helpful goal-setting tips and strategies for healthcare professionals and students. Most professionals have a rough idea of what they want to achieve in their life. However, they fail to make conscious efforts to set their goals and plan a strategy to achieve them.

Goal setting is particularly of more importance for healthcare professionals as their busy and hectic life often prevents them from realizing what they expect from life.

Goal setting can help healthcare professionals, healthcare students, and all those considering a healthcare education. Yet, most of them do not realize the need to set goals and work towards achieving them consciously.

Healthcare professionals who haven’t yet set their goals or lack a strategic view on planning and implementation can read on to learn the tools and methods they can adopt to realize their aspirations.

Goal-setting tips and strategies for healthcare professionals

Tip #1: Brainstorm Ideas

Once you have realized the importance of goal setting, you will need to introspect and have an honest take on what you want to achieve in your life. You can brainstorm ideas based on all the things you want to DO, BE, and HAVE in the next few years.

The goals can be set in terms of a longer duration over say 5 to 10 years. These goals can be broken down into short-term goals they need to achieve over a year or a few months to be able to achieve their long-term goals.

The goal-setting should not be based just on what you want to be or do. You should also consider and list what you DON’T WANT to DO, BE, and HAVE in the next few years.

It is advisable to typically have at least 5 ideas to work on so that your goals are comprehensive and include different spheres of your life such as your career, personal life, health, financial planning, and so on.

Tip #2: Fine Tune Your Ideas

Once you have got a reasonable idea of what you expect from yourself, it’s time to fine-tune your list to set reasonable goals. The best way to do this is to rank the ideas you have listed based on what is more essential, more exciting, and more desirable for you.

Remember that for you to be able to work towards achieving the goals, the idea must be exciting. Your willingness and the strong desire or a need to achieve the goal could work as an incentive and keep you motivated.

So, check your 5 potential ideas to make sure the goals are exciting enough for you before you move further.

Tip #3: Set 3 Goals

Pick 3 goals from the top of the list of your ideas that are stated in the positive and align with your values. The goals should be specific, measurable, and easier for steering you in the proper direction.

Tip #4: Planning

This is a crucial step in meeting your targets and achieving success. The planning should involve identifying the success accelerators and obstacles. This is called SWOT analysis and can be considered a strategic weapon for goal setting.

SWOT analysis refers to the analysis of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The success accelerators include your strengths and opportunities such as the things you can start or stop doing and do more or less to achieve the goals with reasonable efforts.

Threats and weaknesses in SWOT analysis are the obstacles you need to overcome. The obstacles may include the factors that could get in your way.  Based on SWOT analysis, you can plan a strategy to implement or work towards achieving the goals. 

Tip #5: Implementation

Implementation involves taking actual action to achieve your goals. You can start by identifying that ONE thing you can do for EACH goal in the first week or month.

Write down just ONE action that you can complete towards EACH of the goals and then, break down the action into smaller steps until you are ensured of 100% commitment. You may set a commitment for more than one action for one or more goals. However, the idea is to have at least one action set to be fulfilled for each goal. The sooner you start working towards each action, the better. 

Finally, at the end of your list of goals and actions, sign against “YES, I am committed to achieving these goals” as a reminder to yourself to stay motivated and dedicated to the implementation plan.  

Tip # 6: Gain Support

During SWOT analysis, you will realize that there are certain people who can work like your strengths and provide opportunities while some would act as a threat.

As you continue with the implementation of your goals, make sure you gain support from the people who can strengthen your motivation and provide opportunities. They may include your friends, family members, your personal trainer, coach, or colleagues. Have a specific expectation about how you want each of them to support you and share your expectations with them.

Similarly, try to maintain distance from or minimize counterproductive interactions with the people you think could create obstacles in your implementation plan. 

Tip #7: Take Off

Now, you are ready to take off. You have set your goals and have an action plan in place to achieve them. It is important to revisit your list of goals and actions from time to time to assess where you stand.

Certainly, avoid being critical of yourself in case you are not able to complete the actions. Instead, try to analyze why you could not work on those actions. This will help you to detect possible threats and allow you to avoid repeating the mistakes.

Of course, keep in mind that goal setting and implementation are continuous processes. You need to work on your goals and actions regularly with perseverance.

Conclusion

Healthcare professionals lead a hectic and stressful life that can prevent them from paying attention to their own desires and aspirations. The goal-setting tips discussed here are meant to help them introspect and set goals so that they can achieve success in their career, personal relations, and other spheres of life.

(Related Article: The Secret to Surviving Hard, the Miserable Medical Schools)