[Contact with violence--health professionals and their patients victims of abuse]

Using qualitative methods of collecting data and analysis, this article outlines the way health care professionals, mainly pediatricians, feel about violence and their responsibility in denouncing the cases which they were forced to deal with. Although a typical "case study"--the experience in Instituto Fernandes Figueira/FIOCRUZ--the major concern of this work is to offer material for reflexion about procedures that should or could be taken in face to child morbidity caused by "external causes", making suggestions for a health conduct that enhances the relationship between violence and the medical practice related to child and adolescent abuse.