They had a very difficult situation on their hands, and they weren’t used to that. They were used to ideal conditions.
Not many people in this country would be used to a situation like post-Katrina New Orleans. However, I expect that medical personnel at a public hospital in NO constantly deal with "very difficult situation[s]"; in fact, that is probably the norm. At any rate, they most certainly do not work under "ideal conditions".
I don't see how anybody who wasn't there can imagine what the conditions were like, and under what stresses people had to make sometimes awful decisions.
I don’t have to be at the scene of the crime to know that murder is wrong. If jurors could only be chosen from a pool of people who were at the scene of the crime our justice system would be pretty screwed up.