[Usefulness of patients' reports in monitoring rational use of medicines]

To determine the usefulness of patients' reports in constructing indicators of the rational use of medicines and to analyse these reports' benefits and limitations in comparison with the medical records.

Cross-sectional multi-centred study.

Eight primary care health centres.

For each centre a randomised sample, stratified by medical list, was selected of 125 subjects over 18 who had attended on some occasion the medical clinic in the previous 12 months (1000 subjects in all).

A <> questionnaire was designed and distributed (with questions referring to objective concrete experiences), in which information was gathered on various aspects of the use of medicines. In addition, these data were checked against the medical records of the subjects who answered the questionnaire. The reply rate was 43.7% for the questionnaire as a whole. It fluctuated between 92.0% and 46.0% in different specific items. The age of the patient, the number of consultations and suffering a chronic illness all affected the level of response to the questionnaire. Nevertheless, the users provided between 2 and 5 times more information than the medical record, with moderate-to-high reliability. Concordance between what was reported and what was recorded varied between 72.0% and 82.0%.

The user's report can be useful, as a substitute for and as a complement to other sources of information, to construct indicators of the rational use of medication from an integrated perspective.