After working in ER's for a long time, docs, nurses, techs get burned out, and start to think that the patients are fools who pursued bad habits and made bad choices, and richly deserve their gunshot wounds, heart attacks and strokes. In fact, ED staff are ED staff by choice, and can stop doing it whenever they choose to do so. It is hard to get the burnouts to quit the ER, so they stay there, being and angry at the patients that are the reason for the ER's existence, and much less effective at their jobs than they once were. It is tough to recognize the symptoms in oneself, and scary to make the move out of the ER into some other employment setting. Happened to me. Probably happens to SAR personnel and survival listserv participants, too. The take-away might be: If I am really angry at folks lost in the snow on Mt Hood, maybe it says more about me than about the lost folks.