The Baldwin Award is made in recognition of DeWitt ‘Bud’ Baldwin Jr.’s lifelong and distinguished contribution to interprofessional care. It was first awarded in 2009 for the best article of the 2008 volume of the Journal of Interprofessional Care. Each year since, a panel of judges recruited from the Journal’s editorial board assesses all the articles published in a single volume and decides upon the winner based upon five key criteria for quality. Below, we detail the process and outcome of the most recent winner of the Baldwin Award for volume 28.
The adjudication process
The judging panel changed a little this year as Alan Bleakley stepped down as chair after his six year involvement. We would of course like to thank Alan for all his hard work. The panel for this year’s award consisted of Journal editorial board members: Joanne Goldman (who has once judged on the award); John Toner (a long-standing award judge) and Scott Reeves (an award judge for the past few years).
In judging the quality of work published in the journal we used the following (well established) five criteria to select the winner. An article:
-Adds significantly to the evidence base informing interprofessional care and education worldwide
-Potentially has a significant impact on theory informing practice in interprofessional care and education
-Potentially has a significant impact on research design in interprofessional care and education.
-Is clear and cogent (written well, and clearly argued).
-Shows innovation in the field of interprofessional studies and practice.
Only articles (not commentaries, short reports, editorials) are considered for the Baldwin Award. Articles authored or co-authored by any of us (the judges) are removed from consideration. Articles are scored on a scale from 1 to 10 on each criterion listed above. The six Journal issues that made up volume 28 were divided equally among the judges, (we each assess around 20 papers). However, one of us did read all the articles to get an overview of range and quality and to ensure parity across scores. One of us then collated results and discussed grades with the other two judges across two rounds. We took the top three articles from each judge to round two and assessed these articles, taking into consideration our shared summaries of the strengths and weaknesses of these articles.
The Baldwin Award winner
Based on the above process, we came to a unanimous decision on the winning article:
Paula Rowland & Simon Kitto. Patient safety and professional discourses: implications for interprofessionalism
Congratulations to both authors who provided a very thoughtful critical analysis of interprofessional patient safety practices which employed a sophisticated theorising of this project by drawing on Michel Foucault’s work on discourse.
Runners Up
We must also congratulate the two runners up which the judging panel felt were both very strong contributions to the Journal:
Christopher Green. The making of the interprofessional arena in the United Kingdom: a social and political history
Douglas Archibald, David Trumpower and Colla MacDonald. Validation of the interprofessional collaborative competency attainment survey (ICCAS)
It was felt that Green presented a very illuminating analysis key conceptual and theoretical elements in his discursive paper on the socio-politics of IPE in the UK, whereas Archibald and colleagues carefully detailed the validation process of a new innovative tool to assess collaborative competence.
Honourable Mention
In addition, for their rare economic evaluation of Interprofessional student clinics, we agreed that an honourable mention should go to the following paper:
Terry Haines, Fiona Kent & Jennifer Keating. Interprofessional student clinics: an economic evaluation of collaborative clinical placement education
Congratulations again to all the authors whose papers have contributed to improving the scholarship of the interprofessional field.
Brief reflections
While it was agreed amongst the judges that the standard and quality of articles published in the Journal continues to improve, it was noted there were a few areas which authors should pay attention to in designing, implementing and writing-up their interprofessional studies:
-It was agreed that many of the quantitative papers could improve their quality if authors more effectively engaged with theoretical debate related to the work described.
-While qualitative papers were generally better at theorising, a number of these paper could have been improved through better use of an underpinning research methodology when designing the study.
-Of the small, but growing number of mixed methods papers submitted, it was felt that more effort was needed to ensure engagement with a clear research design (e.g. sequential, convergent) and also that approaches to data collection were more balanced with equal amounts of quantitative or qualitative data gathered.
Again judging on the Baldwin Award was both an insightful and illuminating process. We would like to congratulate again the winning authors as well as the runners-up on their stimulating articles. We would also like to acknowledge all authors who publish their work in the Journal of Interprofessional Care for continuing to make the journal such a vibrant and important medium of exchange and innovation in our field.
Scott Reeves
Joanne Goldman
John Toner
Baldwin Award Judges, Journal of Interprofessional Care