[Prevalence of violence reported by patients consulting an emergency service].
Violence and their consequences on health is increasingly part of the daily activities of health professionals. A large proportion of victims of violence do use emergency services according to the literature. Those services are often the first contact in the health care system for victims of violence. This potential opportunity to follow the victims, make necessary to improve the quality of the screening, thus because persons concerned by violence will not easily reveal their past or current history of violence. This delicate problem leads often to under diagnosis. This paper presents the research protocol developed to assess the prevalence of violence in an emergency unit in a University hospital. We obtained a high participation rate of 77% and a high proportion of violence (11.40%) confirming the public health importance of this health problem.