"Eat Your Spinach" Nurses: How commonplace?

I'm a wannabe, and I had a fascinating conversation with a Nurse this evening. Actually, out of respect, I mainly shut up and listened. I will try to be as even-handed and dispassionate as I can in portraying what I heard:

- I have watched too many people endure real suffering and have watched too many people die to have any patience at all with people whose problems don't begin to compare. I'm not going to hold anybody's hand; I'm going to work my tail off and give them the best care possible, but I won't tolerate their whining when other people have it much worse. I've been through worse, and I took it and encouraged myself. Kids? Totally different. I'll do anything I can for kids. I don't want a Doctor who'll chat with me about the weather. I want him to find the problem, fix it, and move on. -

I have the greatest respect for this person and for what she has accomplished. And I realize it takes every kind of person to make the world complete. Still, what I heard strikes me as a variant of, "Eat your spinach because there are kids starving in (insert country here), and I don't want to hear your whining."

Is this an attitude commonplace - or perhaps necessary for a Nurse's emotional survival? Or did I encounter someone out of the ordinary?