Examples of goals and objectives
| Content/topic area | Goal | Poorly written objective | Well-written objective |
| Pain management | Learners will understand the basic pathophysiology of both acute and chronic pain and be able to apply it to individual patients. | The learner will be able to understand the basic pathophysiology of both acute and chronic pain. The learner will be able to apply their understanding of the pathophysiology to a specific patient diagnosis. | The learner will be able to explain the differences between the pathophysiology of acute versus chronic pain. The learner will be able to appropriately identify whether an individual patient’s pain is more likely due to acute versus chronic versus mixed causes. |
| Smoking cessation | Learners will be able to address the topic of tobacco cessation in all office encounters. | The learner will understand and apply the “5 A’s” approach to smoking cessation in a typical office encounter. | By the end of the curriculum, the learner will be able to list the five steps of the ‘5 A’s’ approach to smoking cessation and have demonstrated the use of it in a video-taped patient encounter. |
| Skin biopsy | Learners will be able to demonstrate the most common techniques for performing a skin biopsy including shave, punch and excisional biopsies. | The learner will learn the techniques of shave, punch and excisional biopsies. | By the end of residency, the learner will have demonstrated, under observation, the techniques of shave, punch and excisional skin biopsies and be deemed able to function independently by the observing attending physician. |