• Graduate medical education
• healthcare quality improvement
• patient safety

How do you know when a scholarly discipline comes of age? For example, just two or three decades ago, the field of health services research was an infant, with little attention paid to it in the halls of academe. Now, it is a mainstream discipline where a scholar can make his or her academic bones with little fear of risking a career at the margins of scholarship.

Many readers of QSHC who have toiled in the scholarly vineyards of healthcare improvement and patient safety certainly consider these fields mainstream. Nevertheless, many in healthcare, particularly academe, are just beginning to acknowledge the centrality of these fields. I propose that scholarship in these fields is indeed close to full-blown adulthood. What are the signs? Here are five.