{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.036917098445595854, 'fraction_numerical': 0.020077720207253884, 'mean_word_length': 5.628755364806867, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Baldwin Award 2008: Best Paper Announcement

The Baldwin Award will be made annually for the best paper published in the Journal of Interprofessional Care. An international team – Alan Bleakley (co-ordinator), Marion Jones, Steve Wilson and John Toner – agreed the judging criteria and process for the 2008 Volume 22. Four criteria were agreed: (i) adds significantly to the evidence base informing interprofessional care and education worldwide; (ii) potentially has a significant impact on theory informing practice in interprofessional care and education; (iii) potentially has a significant impact on research design in interprofessional care and education; and (iv) is written well and clearly argued. Over two rounds of judging, the best paper published in 2008 was considered to be: Gillian Nisbet, Graham D. Hendry, Gary Rolls & Michael J. Field’s ‘‘Interprofessional learning for pre-qualification health care students: An outcomes-based evaluation’’, 2008; 22(1):57–68. It is imperative that we add to the evidence base in interprofessional learning, moving beyond satisfaction studies to measure outcomes. This paper clearly met three of the four criteria above (1, 3 and 4) at a high level and stood out clearly as the best of the data-driven field research papers. The paper studies interprofessional interaction amongst pre-qualification students in the workplace and sets out to evaluate practice, using criteria set by explicit learning outcomes. The study promotes collaboration, articulates tensions in interprofessional education, delineates active processes for interprofessional learning, and offers clear benefits for overcoming role stereotypes in health professional education at the beginning level. While the study is local and the sample small, the study design is thoughtful and rigorous and could be replicated. Importantly, the authors are reflexive about the limitations of the study. The study could have been improved by looking at the interactions not just between students on placements, but between students and expert professionals in working teams. While ambitious methodologically, the study was less ambitious theoretically, grounding itself in ‘‘adult and experiential learning’’ theory, that, elsewhere, has been strongly critiqued. However, the article draws intelligently upon organizational theory. The judging team heartily congratulate the winning authors in a strong short list that included an excellent literature review (Emmanuelle Bélanger & Charo Rodriguez’s ‘‘More than the sum of its parts? A qualitative research synthesis on multi-disciplinary primary care teams’’, 2008; 22(6):587–597), and a thought-provoking conceptual article (Yves Couturier, Dominique Gagnon, Sébastian Carrier & Francis Etheridge’s ‘‘The interdisciplinary condition of work in relational professions of the health and social care field: A theoretical standpoint’’, 2008; 22(4):341–351). The judging team would like to express their appreciation to all authors of papers published in JIC during 2008 and anticipate a similarly high standard to judge in 2009.