Goal-oriented care. A shared language and co-creative practice for health and social care.

Medical and social care professionals are used to entering a relationship with care seekers with a diagnostic pair of glasses. They are looking for problems to be solved. In caring for patients with complex medical and social needs this is likely to lead to suboptimal results. Goal-Oriented care is a response to the limitations of problem-oriented care, particularly in confrontation with increasingly complex needs of patients with multiple chronic conditions and challenging socio-economic conditions.Goal-Oriented Care is a relatively new concept and takes a pragmatic approach to deal with complex needs. It puts the priorities and life goals of the patients at the center. This helps practitioners to prioritize, and to co-create, with peers and patients, an efficacious and humane path towards living with multiple conditions. Patient, practitioner and the wider health care system are poised to benefit from this. A Summer Academy, organized in September 2019 jointly by the Dr. Daniël De Coninck Fund and the International Learning Collaborative on Goal-oriented care, explored the undoubted potential of this new and wide-ranging concept of goal-oriented care. The De Coninck Fund aims to disseminate innovative concepts as part of its vision of supporting future-oriented, integrated, strong primary care which is accessible, caring and of high quality. We hope this publication will contribute towards a better understanding of goal-oriented care and will encourage primary care practitioners to put it into practice.