Burnout: perspective

So, one of the reasons I wanted to start a blog is that I tend to process things really well when I write them out, which helps alleviate a lot of stress, and posting it on the internet where literally ANYONE can read it keeps me accountable, both in how I express myself and how I behave.
Lately, I've been dealing with a lot burnout and compassion fatigue at work. "Burnout" is a buzzword in nursing; the articles dealing with it are countless, and often repetitive: Nurses are stressed. New nurses are leaving the profession after only a few years due to burnout. Nurses should do things in their personal lives to help relieve stress, like eat right, sleep enough, exercise and get massages. Hospitals and employers should treat their nurses like valued employees, because the nursing shortage is bad. It's very bad. And burnout is bad. It's bad that so many nurses are burning out.
Ahem. Yeah. The articles aren't much help; they mostly just make me frustrated (ironic, no?). So I figured maybe if I write about this frustration, and remind myself of why I chose this profession, it will help keep me grounded in the minute-to-minute reality of being a bedside nurse in an emergency department, dealing with patients that curse at you, spit on you, vomit on you, bleed on your scrubs and urinate on the floor.
A few years ago, my younger sister went through this phase wherein she was obsessed with our home videos. The result? Our entire family watched hour upon hour of footage, our own personal family time capsule. It was great fun, and now we laugh all over again at things we had forgotten.
In one of these videos, I am roughly four years old, while my brother is two, laying on the floor pretending to be sick whilst I, the medical professional, assess and treat him (the poor kid was such a good sport).
All my life, I wanted to help people. I decided to pursue nursing instead of medical school because I want to stay home with my kids one day, and I didn't want to pay for eight years of school just to give up a fledgling practice. (Plus, as Carla states on the show Scrubs, "we do all the real work anyway" ;)
The conflict occurs when some people really don't want help. Like the alcoholics who come in and withdraw, spending long, miserable hours in the process of detox, only to be discharged so that they can get drunk again. Often patients know just the right words to use to get what they want, wasting valuable resources that could be better spent on a person with greater need. And sometimes a patient is just mean, a rude, in-your-face, calls you a name you'd never even heard before, jerk.
The problem is that I know I'm supposed to love that person the way Jesus did. I am supposed to love the stinky homeless man who calls me nasty names and insults me because I look young just as much as the sweet guy who cooperates with his treatments and respects the professionals caring for him--even the young RN.
(Side note: I don't mind looking young, and I don't always mind it when patients confuse me for a student, or ask my age; it's all in their tone and how they word it.)
So as a reminder to myself, below are my "encouraging pre-shift" verses, because I want to be a good nurse, the kind that is effective and compassionate; I don't want to "burn out" after a measly three years at the bedside. And while I know that there will always be days that I dream of another job, any other job, one with regular hours and regular clothes and not dealing with other people's bodily fluids (really, they don't tell you this in school, but dealing with other people's bodily fluids is about 90% of what a bedside nurse does), the below verses are a wake-up call that this is where God placed me, and this is where I need to serve with a good attitude and heart for the patients I see and the work I do.
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men."
"Do all things without grumbling or disputing, so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world."
"Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord."
Colossians 3:23, Philippians 2:14-15, 1 Corinthians 15:58