Carrying the torch: Dr Lucian Leape’s enduring legacy in patient safety – lessons from dentistry

On 30 June 2025, the healthcare world lost Dr Lucian Leape, widely regarded as the father of the modern patient safety movement. His 1994 paper ‘Error in Medicine’ reframed medical errors as symptoms of flawed systems rather than individual failings. 1 Five years later, the Institute of Medicine’s To Err Is Human report, which Dr Leape helped shape, galvanised a national reckoning with patient safety.2 Through the Lucian Leape Institute, and beyond its formal structure, he championed five transforming concepts: transparency, integrated care platforms, patient and family engagement, restoration of joy in work and medical education reform.3