Understanding the differences of goals, objectives, and trials on Ambiki will help you get the most out of Ambiki's various progress tracking features.

Long Term Goals
Long term goals should be objective and measurable and you should have a long term goal for each area of deficit being treated (i.e. speech, language, fluency, etc.). A long term goal is where you would like the patient to get to in order to discharge them. A long term goal usually sticks with the patient for all of their therapy journey or is just adjusted as they get older. 

Short Term Goal
Short term goals should be developmentally appropriate and must be objective and measurable. The short term goal should be something the patient should be able to achieve before their next re-evaluation. This is a helpful article to read regarding goal best practices.

Objective
The objective is the specific task/mini-goal/activity you are targeting in this particular visit. (i.e. what are you doing in today's visit to specifically work toward one of the patient's long term or short term goals). Objectives should be written in a concise and clear manner and should only target one specific thing. You do not need to specify target trials, accuracy, nor prompting in the objective.

Examples of good objectives:

Examples of poorly written objectives:

Trial
Is one test / attempt of the objective wherein the result can be observed/measured.

Examples

Speech Therapy

Short Term Goal: Patient will increase his pragmatic language skills to include: greetings, establishing/maintaining eye contact, increase joint attention during tasks, turn-taking, playing with peers with 80% accuracy over 3 consecutive sessions

Objective: Initiate eye contact with person or object presented

Trial:
+ (patient correctly initiated eye contact)
- (patient did not initiate eye contact)

Objective: Take turns while playing Connect Four

Trial:
+ (patient took turns appropriately)
- (patient did not take turns appropriately)

Short Term Goal: Patient will demonstrate understanding and use of answering "WH" questions and yes/no questions with 80% accuracy over the course of five sessions.

Objective: Answer "who" questions related to using objects

Trial:
+ (patient correctly answered the question)
- (patient incorrectly answered the question)

Occupational Therapy

Short Term Goal: Patient will string 4 or more beads, using one hand to pick up and manipulate and the other to manage the string, with minimal physical assistance on 80% of opportunities.

Objective: Put beads on a string

Trial:
 + (patient successfully put a bead on the string)
 - (patient was unsuccessful at putting a bead on the string)

Short Term Goal: Patient will catch a medium sized ball with hands on 3/5 trials with no more than 2 verbal/visual prompts across 80% of opportunities.

Objective: Catch a medium sized ball

Trial:
+ (patient successfully caught the ball)
- (patient was unsuccessful at catching the ball)

Short Term Goal: Following calming sensory input, patient will tolerate a completing grooming task (brushing teeth, washing hair, brushing hair) with no more than 1 prompt for redirection and without overreaction on 5/7 days of the week as reported by parent.

Objective: Brush teeth without overreaction

Trial:
+ (patient successfully brushed teeth without an overreaction)
- (patient was unsuccessful at brushing teeth without an overreaction)

Feeding Therapy

Short Term Goal: Using the SOS Approach to Feeding steps, Christopher will demonstrate acceptance and success with presented foods and liquids that are of different textures, smells, and visual presentation improve the patients ability to tolerate sensory over-reaction to food. Christopher will start by tolerating unpreferred food in the room and increase to eating/swallowing a bite; success is demonstrated by an independent advancement on the SOS Approach scale across 3 out of 4 sessions.

Objective: Touch non-preferred foods

Trial:
+ (patient touched the non-preferred food)
- (patient did not touch the non-preferred food)

Short Term Goal: Christopher will increase his volume and range of foods eaten orally to include complimentary solid foods from all food groups (fruits, vegetables, proteins, grains) and textures.

Objective: Taste new vegetables

Trial:
+ (patient tasted the vegetable)
- (patient did not taste the vegetable)