Establish General Aims and Scope

Establishing team supported goals is essential for maintaining focus and motivating the team. Start by creating broad goals that generally define the purpose of your program. For example,

Examples of general aims
General aim 1: Substantially improve the discharge process for hospitalized patients.
General aim 2: Decrease 30-day readmissions.
General aim 3: Improve patient satisfaction regarding the discharge process.
General aim 4: Increase the knowledge of nurses and physicians in optimizing the discharge process.

As your team develops, your challenge will be to define many of the terms in your general aim, which will entail developing defined metrics and more mature, specific, time-defined aims. For example, what aspects of the discharge care transition do you want to improve first? What are the factors that lead to a readmission? How do we educate caregivers about the discharge process?

Download the general aims task sheet to help you develop your general aims.

A “stretch” goal should be established that is aggressive enough to mandate a change in the design of your current process to achieve it.

You must also determine the target population(s) for improved outcomes and clearly define the scope of your efforts. Consider these questions:

• Will you target one ward or a service?
• Will you target one or more groups of physicians?
• How long will the pilot intervention last?
• Will you focus on one or more aspects of the transition?
• Which patient population(s) will be targeted?

Again, we encourage a broad scope of efforts that affects all hospital discharges, but it may be reasonable to start small and spread your improvement methods to other areas.

Even if the scope of your effort includes all patients in your hospital or system, the interventions you choose should be piloted on a small scale when possible. The bottom line is this: Think BIG, but start small. Don’t bite off more than you can chew initially, but serial testing and learning on a small scale can make even very large projects more manageable.