Pediatric Learning Solutions Celebrates Golden Anniversary
Pediatric Learning Solutions (PLS) has delivered a quarter century of innovation and educational opportunities in partnership with children’s 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.
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.”
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Education in hand
Among 25 years of PLS innovations, Nelson is most proud of the team for creating its mobile app.
“I love that it integrates so naturally with the courses learners take through their organization’s learning management system and that the course experience translates directly back to the PLS App,” she said. “It also allows us to provide more readily accessible job aids, videos, and brief patient scenario case studies.”
In 2025, eight years after its launch, the PLS App saw a 65% increase in downloads and gained five new courses:
- RSV
- Kawasaki Disease
- Rheumatic Heart Disease
- Congenital Infections in the Newborn
- Hemostasis and the Coagulation Cascade
CE Credits for clinicians
While information in the app and courses gives learners new skills and confidence, PLS also offers a wide range of continuing education (CE) credits for clinical staff to gain even more value. In 2025, clinicians and care providers earned 477,415 CE credits, including:
- 428,498 continuing nursing education credits
- 26,870 continuing respiratory care credits
- 12,259 continuing medical education credits
- 9,788 professional development unit credits
PLS also provides virtual learning opportunities beyond the courses to further support hospitals. The De-escalation Training and Documentation Webinar Series had 185 attendees from 50 hospitals and health systems.
Looking ahead
PLS has big plans for the next 25 years.
In 2026, building blocks will include an updated look to align with CHA’s new brand identity.
Users can look forward to revamped curricula and implementation guides to better support educators, blended assessments throughout courses for improved retention, and updates as the team explores adding CE credits to app courses. PLS will also release new course versions in the Accreditation and Regulatory and Pediatric Acute Care libraries.
“Going forward, I am most excited about impacting more hospitals and patients and delivering education in new and innovative ways that are not only appealing but really help the knowledge stick,” Nelson said.
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