[Evaluation of a collaborative goal setting intervention in patients with chronic back pain]

Although setting rehabilitation goals is considered to be a core rehabilitation process, in actual rehabilitation practice there is a considerable need for improvement with respect to consistent goal orientation. The objective of the PARZIVAR project was therefore to develop an intervention for participative goal setting in medical rehabilitation. This article reports the results of the evaluation of the PARZIVAR intervention in patients with chronic back pain.

The PARZIVAR intervention was evaluated in a sequential control group design with 3 measurement points (before the start of rehabilitation, at the end of rehabilitation, and at 6-month follow-up). The proximal endpoints were defined as patient perception of participative goal setting, subjective awareness of goals, and satisfaction with goal setting. The distal endpoints were intensity of pain and generic and illness-specific functioning.

Overall, the degree of achieving aspects of participative goal setting was higher in the intervention group. There were no differences regarding satisfaction with goal setting, however, and distal outcomes also remained unchanged after the intervention was implemented.

Participation in the PARZIVAR intervention was partially reflected in the perception of the rehabilitation patients, but the effects regarding distal outcomes in the intervention group did not exceed those of usual care. There is a need for more research into how concepts of goal setting can be improved in the future to better address the diverse functions of goal setting.