RECOMMENDATIONS are the “action steps” that the team believes the client should take to address the issues of the Field Study.  The Recommendations are based ONLY on the findings and conclusions developed from the data collection process.  By definition, Recommendations should be worthy of endorsement and implementation by the client.

Recommendations are created in a little different manner from findings and conclusions in that each team member, given the findings and conclusions, should develop his/her own recommendations INDEPENDENTLY from the other team members BEFORE the team meeting is held for the recommendations.

With this in mind, each team member should keep the following question in mind throughout the entire Field Study process:  “If I were required to tell my client what to do about these issues today, what three or four things would I recommend?”

After the Wheaton Medical Clinic Field Study team developed their findings and conclusions, each team member was assigned the task of developing his/her own recommendations for each issue that had been addressed and limit those recommendations to TWO per issue.  The faculty advisor made it very clear to the team members that this assignment was to be conducted independently of other members of the team.  Each student was assigned to do his/her BEST THINKING to create the recommendations in preparation for the team meeting.

The team then held a meeting in which they came to a consensus regarding the recommendations for each issue.  At the conclusion of the meeting, the team captain was assigned the task of drafting the consensus recommendations over a period not to exceed two days.

The team then met and reached agreement on the recommendations written by the team captain.

Recommendations, when written, should be clear, to the point, and action-oriented.  Action verbs should be used.  A sample of a recommendation developed by the Wheaton Medical Clinic student team is shown in the image below.

Sample Recommendation