Résumé
Background: nowadays, violence against women represents a major public health concern despite the efforts to raise awareness about it at the local and the global level. Doctors have a crucial role to play in detecting violence against women but they are confronted to many barriers
Objective: to identify the barriers that impedes physicians from screening women for domestic violence
Subjects and methods: a cross-sectional study was conducted using a questionnaire to collect data from 62 primary health care physicians at Makah Almukarramah city
Results: more than a half of the physicians, working at primary health centers at Makkah and who participated in our survey, dealt with a case of women abused by her partner. Many participants agreed that there were barriers that impeded them from screening violence like insufficient training, feeling of embarrassment, shame of asking question about abuse and fear of revenge by the husband or relatives
Conclusion: implementing training program with intervention could help in managing and preventing violence against women