Background: Women around the world are subjected to violence in intimate relationships. Statistics indicate that one in three women has experienced intimate partner violence. The violence women are subjected to occurs in different forms and primarily behind closed doors in their homes. Nurses play a significant role in identifying violence in their interactions with these women, as they often withhold this information from healthcare providers.

Aim: The aim was to describe nurse's experiences of identifying women exposed to violence.

Method: A literature study based on eight qualitative scientific articles from the nurse's perspective and analysed with Friberg’s five-step model.

Results: The result consists of two main themes and seven subthemes. It turned out that nurses often get emotionally affected when they hear the abused women talk about their experiences. Nurses' previous experiences have a significant role in the care encounter. Other factors that affect the nurses' ability to identify abused women are perceived to be lack of knowledge, lack of routine and lack of time. But also the dilemma of nurses believing that it is not their responsibility to identify abused women.

Conclusion: Nurses have a lack of knowledge about the subject which results in them hesitating and not daring to ask the question about violence. The conclusion is that several factors affect the nurse in the identification of abused women. Nurses need to improve their knowledge of the subject and need clear guidelines from their workplace to be able to take their responsibility.