When you become a doctor or a nurse, you take a Hippocratic Oath... it is your duty as a practitioner of medicine to ensure that the safety and well-being of the sick and injured come first, before anything else. Medicine is different from other professions, in that the lives of other people are directly in your hands. It is arguably the job which puts you in a position of unique power over others, and as such, it is a profession that must be practiced only by the most dedicated and honest individuals. If someone cares so much about their paycheck that they would leave someone to die a preventable death, then medicine is not the profession for them (I wonder what would be?). The most important contract for a doctor should not be the one with his boss or the hospital, but the unspoken bond of trust that exists between him and his patients. It should be a criminal offense for doctors and nurses to abandon their charges and go on strike.