It seems that, in the face of a physician’s directives, the nurses unhooked their “professional intelligences” and moved to a click, whirr form of responding. None of their considerable medical training or knowledge was engaged in the decision of what to do. Instead, because obedience to legitimate authority had always been the most preferred and efficient action in their work setting, they had become willing to err on the side of automatic obedience. It is all the more instructive that they had traveled so far in this direction that their error had come not in response to genuine authority
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