Lucian Leape and healthcare errors. Interview by Pamela K. Scarrow and Susan V. White

Lucian L. Leape, MD, is a health policy analyst whose research has focused on error prevention and appropriateness of care. He is currently adjunct professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. Prior to joining the faculty at Harvard, he was professor of surgery at Tufts University School of Medicine and chief of pediatric surgery at the New England Medical Center. He has been a leading advocate of the nonpunitive systems approach to the prevention of medical error and has led several studies of adverse drug events and their underlying systems failures. In addition, he has directed research into overuse and underuse of cardiovascular procedures. Dr. Leape was a founding director of the National Patient Safety Foundation, the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Error, and the Harvard Kennedy School Executive Session. He led the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's first Breakthrough Collaborative on Prevention of Adverse Drug Events. He was a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Quality of Health Care in America Committee, which recently released its reports, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System and Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century. Recent awards include the Distinguished Service Award of the American Pediatric Surgical Association (1997), the Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award (1998), the Donabedian Award from the Medical Care Section of the American Public Health Association (1999), the Cheers Award from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (1999), and the Pinnacle Award from the American Pharmaceutical Association (2001). Dr. Leape is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Medical School and trained in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and at Boston Children's Hospital.