Introduction:

dating violence is recognized as one of the main manifestations of violence in university students; it requires study and prevention.

Objective:

to characterize dating violence of medical students of the University of Medical Sciences of Cienfuegos.

Materials and methods:

a descriptive study was carried out in 240 second-year medical students. A self-administered questionnaire was used. The variables were: sex, age; years of study, most frequent types of dating violence, manifestations of violence types, directionality, knowledge of the negative consequences and types of consequences. Descriptive statistics was used.

Results:

62.5 % of students perceived psychological violence as the most frequent. 85.8 % described several manifestations and 14.2 % were unable to do so. Among psychological behavioral manifestations or expressions, they recognize reification, degradation and threats; blows are integrated into the physical violence, and looking at women as sexual objects and infidelity into the sexual violence. Bi-directionality prevailed in aggressions (63 %). It was shown in 87.5 % that violence has negative consequences in the cognitive-affective-behavioral sphere.

Conclusions:

the students perceived that dating violence is bidirectional with a predominance of psychological violence generating health damages. The combination between their perception of the event and the little knowledge they have about dating violence hinders disclosing the magnitude of this health problem. Herein lays the need of carrying out a group of actions aimed at reducing it.

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