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10
Hot Buttons and Weak Spots
PERSONAL SELF-DEFENSE
Nancy loved being a traveling nurse. Like many travelers, Nancy had
put in her time at a major city hospital, got the experience she
needed, and then, at age thirty-two, decided to make a career
change. Travelers, she found, get more money, and a bit more respect
from the medical staff than the regulars do.
As a young nurse, Nancy was appalled by the egocentricity of the
surgeons she worked with; she had been surprised, actually, that they
were entirely different than she had fantasized about in school. She
used to wonder why some of them weren’t sent for psychotherapy, or
at least an anger management course. A wise old nursing instructor
explained to her, following a public dressing down she received from
a doctor, that they act this way—rude, crude, and lewd—because of
the intense pressure they face every time they cut into a human body.
“They really do feel for their patients deep down inside,” assured