Development of the pediatric research in inpatient settings (PRIS) network: Lessons learned

Since the term ‘‘hospitalist’’ was coined in 1996, the field of hospital medicine has grown exponentially. Hospitalists are caring for increasing numbers of adults—including Medicare beneficiaries in hospitals across the United States. Pediatric hospital medicine has grown in parallel. By 1998, 50% of pediatric department chairs across the US and Canada had implemented hospitalist programs, with another 27% reporting they were soon to do so. A bit more than a decade later, pediatric hospitalists can be found in nearly every major academic medical center, and in a large proportion of community hospitals throughout the US and Canada. In the past several years, major advances have begun to occur in the manner in which hospital medicine research is conducted. In this article, we will describe the manner in which pediatric hospital medicine research has advanced over the past several years, culminating in the conduct of several large multicenter research projects through the Pediatric Research in Inpatient Settings (PRIS) Network. We believe that lessons learned in the development of PRIS could help foster the growth of other current and future networks of hospitalist researchers, and lay the groundwork for national improvement efforts.