Cindy,
You are not; "Am I just an old cow lamenting in her field?"
My belief is, it is far broader and more extensive than industry believes. It's not only applicable to your medical fraternity, it is widespread in the electronics industry; and from experience of the "down sizing, out sourcing" phenomena witnessed in the late 90's, it has left an indelible mark throughout all of capitalism.
I speak with electronic related industries daily, on the lack of knowledge and understand of industry principles. I waste 10's hours weekly, attempting to understand signal component errors emanating from broadcast sites that are being monitored by people who, when looking at monitoring equipment, should be able to give a one word, or at most, two word description of a signals deficiency.
In the life of a television picture, from point of origin to final reception, there is over 175,000 places a signal can fail. At least now, I'm getting better at defining specific areas of signal failure when diagnosed by inexperienced personal as; "your signal looks like 'chicken wire'" Highly descriptive, amazingly imaginative but oh so profoundly useless and inept.
Hope you have some answers.
Happy training
Catherine