Violent death and the South African emergency nurse

A violent death is the sudden and unexpected loss of life due to a violent means, and in South Africa, violent death due to interpersonal violence appears to be a huge problem with the majority of these clients being young adults in the prime of their life (Trauma Rev. 5(1) (1997) 1). The objective of the study was to explore the influence that the confrontation of violent death of their clients had on the emergency nurses’ daily personal and professional lives. The participants described a number of physical and emotional ways in which their lives had been affected.