Pediatric Learning Solutions Celebrates Golden Anniversary

Pediatric Learning Solutions (PLS) has delivered a quarter century of innovation and educational opportunities in partnership with hospitals and health systems to ensure quality care for kids.

When Children’s Hospitals’ Knowledge Exchange launched in 2000, the Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) program that would become PLS had just three participants and 11 courses.

Today, more than 1 million people have taken the knowledge and improved skills gained from 235 PLS courses to children’s and neonate’s bedsides across the country.

“The online health care education landscape has changed significantly since I started with PLS 25 years ago, but the core needs remain,” said Amy Nelson, PLS vice president. “Clinicians, especially those new to their role, will always need excellent critical thinking and communication skills – and to feel confident as they care for neonates and children.”

Adapting for learners

In 2025, PLS released 72 new course versions to our NICU and PICU libraries and launched a new Pediatric Respiratory Care Suite.

View the infographic.

The three-year review cycle all PLS courses go through prior to release includes scrutiny by advisory committees of education specialists, oversight from subject matter experts to ensure content aligns with current evidence-based practices, and internal QA testing. A thoughtful approach to how the information is presented and organized is also key for knowledge retention and learner engagement.

“PLS has adapted how we deliver education,” Nelson said. “We are providing content in smaller chunks, creating more patient scenarios guided by the learners’ responses, and making assets more readily accessible.”

These revamped courses helped meet the needs of educators and learners at 102 hospitals and health systems in 2025 alone. Staff at those organizations completed 1.3 million courses.

As respiratory illness season picked up across the country, PLS stepped up to offer all hospitals the Essential Pediatric Respiratory Care Bundle at no change. These five courses prepare pediatric and adult clinicians to care for children with critical respiratory issues.

The work that goes into all PLS courses, and the ways CHA distributes them center on one goal.

“Ideally, we’re impacting the overall quality of care patients are receiving,” Nelson said. “Because their clinicians receive standardized, evidence-based education specific to pediatrics and neonatal, we help the hospitals create confident clinicians who feel comfortable caring for their patients.”