Patient safety: time for a transformational change in medical education

A major change in medical teaching practices is needed to improve patient safety

The Lucien Leape Institute, in Boston, USA, was formed in 2007 to provide a strategic vision for improving patient safety, and is composed of national “thought leaders” (http://www.npsf.org/lli/). The Institute has produced a report on the urgent need to reform medical education,1 and states that many believe we are at a transformational moment similar to that which led to the profound changes in medical education following the release of the Flexner report in the United States 100 years ago.2