SMART goals have become a Swiss army knife in today’s world. From rehabilitation to diabetes management, they are practical to both individuals and corporations.
This article will explain what they are and how to use them to manage a medical writing project.
What is a SMART goal?
A SMART goal is a five-step system to ensure projects get done efficiently and effectively.
To illustrate, if you make a lemon meringue pie from scratch, having the ingredients would be a great start. But is that enough? No. The list of ingredients does not tell where to start, how, and when to use each ingredient, measurements, the proper temperatures to cook it, and how long it needs to stay in the oven.
Medical projects are like a list of ingredients. SMART goals are like the cookbook.
To execute a medical project you need the ingredients – stakeholders, skilled medical writers, and the proper management tools. However, you also need the cookbook to guide each step.
Below is the SMART goal cookbook.
Specific
What is the difference between the words “fruit” and “lemon”? The word fruit is broad and vague whereas the word lemon is specific. Therein lies the key to starting a project- be specific.
Let’s say a client has requested help with writing a paper and the journal submission for a human study on pain management. Would you just submit it to a random institution? Absolutely not.
Instead of accepting the client’s request for “fruit”, you would specify whether they would like it to be submitted to the European Journal of Pain, Pain, or the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. Without that specific metric, you have no idea what the criterion will be for your journal submission.
If you as a project manager are not specific you are setting up the stakeholders and medical writers for failure or to be specific, a journal rejection, and that wouldn’t be smart.
Measurable
Now that you have a lemon or specific goal and not an infinite spectrum of fruit you need to have milestones to measure your progress.
Journal articles are a great opportunity to measure your progress. They have five components
- Abstract
- Introduction
- Methods
- Results
- Discussion
Instead of deciding to complete the whole journal article by a specific date, create milestones for each component. Give each milestone a date and time for completion. This allows the writers, medical editors, and stakeholders to measure the project’s progress.
A journal article requires additional information like the author’s contributions, corresponding author contact information, source of funding support, and potential conflicts of interest. Use all of these factors to measure the progress of your project.
In the words of Tony Robbins progress equals happiness.
Achievable
According to the Minnesota Department of Health, goals should be within reach for your stakeholders and team. It also needs to consider available resources, knowledge, and time. In other words, achievable.
Let’s go back to writing the journal article mentioned earlier. We said the client wanted to submit an article about a human study on pain management to a journal for publication. But wait, can you submit a paper to a journal with information on a human study without showing the ethical approvals obtained prior to doing the study? No. Journals will NOT publish human studies that do not have IRB approval. Without that approval, your journal submission is like a little boy jumping from a tree because he thinks he can fly.
Imagine starting a project with a specific goal, measuring the success criteria but not asking if your goal is achievable. You could waste days or months of time with a rejected journal article.
You can find out whether or not a project is achievable by being specific, measuring milestones, and asking yourself if they are achievable.
Relevant
Would you consider Nutella or barbeque sauce to be relevant to making a lemon meringue pie? No, they are irrelevant to its purpose and conflict with the other ingredients. In a like manner, a project’s goal needs to be aligned with the mission of the company. A lack of relevancy can easily lead to scope creep.
If you are submitting an article that proves that a pharmaceutical drug has been proven safe and effective in reducing chronic pain, ask yourself, how this is relevant to your clients’ mission.
Here’s an action tip💡– Write down every piece of content you can make if the journal article is accepted and connect it to a product or service your client provides. Can you create a series of blogs that create a call to action and boost your client’s sales? Could you produce a video about the article when it is published? Will you be able to create relevant social media posts?
Time-bound
In the same way, a lemon meringue pie needs to be baked in the oven for a specific period of time, your article and subsequent journal submission needs to be tracked and completed then submitted to the journal by a specific time.
Let’s give another example. You have 3 weeks to write the article. A research article typically includes a statistical analysis. To measure the milestones accurately, you need to know whether the client has already completed the statistical analysis or if your team will need to do it. Ask yourself these questions:
- Do I have the available and skilled personnel to analyze the research data?
- How long will it take?
- When does it need to be done so that the other writers can complete their work?
- Do we need to create figures, graphs, or tables as well?
A specific, measurable, achievable, relevant project is good but if it lacks a time-bound framework it will end up either burnt or undercooked. Journal articles and submissions are time-sensitive; the earlier it is completed, the more time you have to perfect them and ensure their punctuality.
Let The Med Writers Help You With Your Medical Writing Projects
According to the National Library of Medicine, rejection rates of various top-tier journals including their own vary between 80% and 85%. Other journals have reported around 90–95%.
The Med Writers use SMART goals to help get ahead of the possibility of rejection and further your company’s mission.
We provide medical writing services for journal articles and submissions, PowerPoint presentations, grant proposals, white papers, medical manuscript editing, social media posts, and more.
Click here to set up a free consultation!