Domestic violence is a pattern of coercive behaviors which may include physical and sexual assault, emotional, psychological, and economic abuse. The pattern is deliberate and aimed at gaining, and then maintaining, ultimate control over the relationship and the intimate partner. To ensure that domestic violence protocols include the components necessary to maximize victim and staff safety, it is imperative that representatives from administration, medicine, nursing, social work, security, and departmental support staff be actively involved at the conceptual stages and throughout the implementation process. The cornerstone of this multidisciplinary collaborative effort is honest, ongoing communication. The author discusses physician barriers to victim identification and protocol development; protocol components; risk assessment; validation; documentation in medical records; collaboration within the service provider community; and the overlap of child abuse and woman abuse. Footnotes, figures