“Goal Setting for Pain Rehabilitation” is part of a series of six Integrative Health tools designed to assist clinicians who want to enhance patient’s chronic pain self-management skills.  For additional information, refer to the other materials in “Self-Management of Chronic Pain.”

Instructions for Clinicians

The Importance of Goal Setting

It is very common for people with chronic pain to feel overwhelmed and isolated because of their condition.  They often use ineffective coping patterns and decrease their activity levels.  They may become preoccupied with the single goal of decreasing their pain, spending a lot of time and resources trying to do so.  Having pain reduction as a solitary goal puts people at risk for frustration, depression, and decreased participation in care.¹  It is important to help patients recognize that pain may or may not improve, but their level of functioning and management of their condition most definitely can.

Chronic pain requires day-to-day management by each person affected by it, and clinicians are in a unique position to educate and prescribe self-management approaches for them.  Some approaches include having patients set functional goals and encouraging them to work on improving their quality of their life despite their pain.

Goal setting approaches have been shown to increase patients’ progress toward mutually agreed upon goals and to foster adherence to physicians’ recommendations.^2,3  Goal setting helps create a successful individualized pain rehabilitation plan^2,3 and improves physician-patient communication.⁴

Time is limited during visits, but it is important to make goal setting with chronic pain patients a priority.  Collaboratively setting goals with patients’ input leads to higher compliance than provider-mandated goals.⁵ A clear, agreed upon treatment plan with concrete tasks to accomplish between appointments will assist the patient in moving forward.  Goal setting is a tool that encourages patient accountability, fosters their self-efficacy through development of active coping strategies, and allows them to gain some control over their condition.  It allows clinicians to monitor the patient’s progress and determine whether continued treatment is warranted.  Goal setting also provides opportunities for clinician feedback on goal completion and such feedback reinforces future goal setting.⁶