Collaborative research in pediatric practice

Research in practice has a long and distinguished history. Pickles,1 a general practitioner in Yorkshire, deduced the difference between infectious and serum hepatitis through careful clinical observation of hundreds of patients in his own practice. In recent years, pediatricians such as Breese2,3 and his colleagues in Rochester, New York, outlined effective methods for the diagnosis and treatment of streptococcal disease in children as a result of studies in their practice, and Carey4 in his suburban Philadelphia practice developed a widely used scale for assessing temperament in children. In the 1970s, Charney and his colleagues in Rochester, New York, developed a more systematic approach to collaborative research in practice, enlisting a large number of the practicing pediatricians who kept registries of their patients with data on visits, laboratory studies, and diagnoses in easily retrievable form.