We used to be pretty idealistic; we thought that medical preofessionals were above average people who were very careful and rarely made mistakes. We still think that there are many medical professionals who fit this image, but we now know (first hand) there are some that do not.
In our situation, the doctor was warned by the hospital pharmacist that the drug he wanted to give had risks of an anaphylactic reaction (which is extremely life threathening), but the doctor never told us. In fact, we asked the doctor to his face if there were any risks to the treatment and he said there were none. We now know that he had already been warned by the pharmacist.
We also found out (after the fact) that the drug this doctor wanted to give is well documented as a contraindication for patients with severe COPD which was what this doctor claimed the drug would help to improve. The medical references and current medical studies show that this drug can cause or worsen respiratory failure in patients with severe COPD.
Despite that both state and federal Patient Rights laws require a doctor to inform a patient of all significant risks with any treatment, this doctor did not tell us any of the critical information. Needless to say, things did not work out well in our case and we ended up with a death in our family.
This was our introduction into the "real" world. We have been fighting for our rights ever since and it has been a real eye opener. We were very naive. Now we are trying very hard to turn this around. This web page is a part of that effort.