Lucian Leape (1930–2024), a former surgeon and pioneer in Patient Safety, has died at 94. Once chief of paediatric surgery at Tufts, Leape grew alarmed by frequent medical errors and their impact on patients. In the late 1980s, he shifted from surgery to research, co-authoring the groundbreaking Harvard Medical Practice Study, which exposed the scale of harm caused by medical mistakes.
This work laid the foundation for the 1999 report To Err Is Human, which estimated that 44,000 to 98,000 Americans died annually due to medical errors, most of them caused by flawed systems, not individual negligence. This was a revolutionary shift in thinking, challenging the traditional culture of individual blame in medicine.
Despite resistance from the medical establishment, Leape's work sparked a movement: it inspired the formation of Patient Safety Departments, led to tighter hospital regulations, resident work hour limits, and mandatory reporting of serious errors. His legacy helped make system level safety a global standard in healthcare, saving thousands of lives.