Introduction:

Family medicine specialists show insufficient performance in the detection, evaluation and intervention in cases of violence.

Objective:

To evaluate the overall preparedness of family medicine specialists with respect to family violence.

Methods:

A descriptive and cross-sectional study was carried out during the first semester of 2019 with 55 family medicine specialists, who were applied a questionnaire, based on the three dimensions derived from overall preparedness: A. risk prevention, early detection and pathogenesis; B. evaluation and diagnosis; and C. intervention and follow-up. These were operationalized through twenty indicators and, through their evaluation, five categories or levels were defined: very high, high, medium, low and very low.

Results:

In the three explored dimensions, there was a clear predominance of the category fairly prepared, followed by poorly prepared. On the other hand, the categories well prepared, very well prepared and excellently prepared showed the lowest percentages in all the areas. A very low level of overall preparedness was found in 92.72 %. A medium level of overall preparedness accounted for 3.64 %, while a low level corresponded to 3.64 %.

Conclusions:

There are insufficiencies in the cognitive, axiological and procedural order, which shows that the overall preparedness of these professionals with respect to family violence has a limited scope to face the varied forms of expression of this reprehensible behavior.

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