Toughest place to be? Nursing on the frontline

Irish nurse Berna Breen saw the brutality of gang warfare in Honduras, writes Ellie O’Byrne, when she worked in an A&E department for RTÉ’s new series of ‘Toughest Place To Be’.

A terrified young man is brought in to accident and emergency. He has been abducted and taken to a derelict house, gagged, and beaten with rocks. He is black and blue, shaking, and whimpering, and so dirty that it’s difficult to see the extent of his wounds. Nurses set about cleaning him of blood and dirt.

In Irish hospitals, the aftermath of such severe violence will be encountered from time to time, and will leave their mark on the healthcare workers that treat them, but in Honduran capital Tegucigalpa, where there has been a murder rate of one person per hour every day since 2010, nurses at the city’s public hospital deal with traumas like these on a nightly basis.