Abstract
Objective: Reflect on medical inexperience in primary care, in the face of cases of domestic violence suffered by women, as well as showing a great consequence of this unpreparedness: underreporting of cases. Methods: Review of 21 scientific publications indexed in the following electronic databases: SciELO, LILACS and PubMed. The reviewed publications address articles from the last 5 years with methodological designs of a descriptive and qualitative nature. Results: To start a discussion, clarify the concept of domestic violence against a woman, highlight the importance of primary health care in assisting victims. Then, complicating factors are presented, in particular the victim's silence and medical unpreparedness. Finally, the factors that generate underreporting are shown, such as difficulty in keeping a mandatory notification and lack of information on the consequences of completing the document. Final considerations: Domestic violence against women is a complex public health problem that involves the construction, maintenance and normalization of violence in our society, and echoes the technical and educational unpreparedness of Brazilian doctors.