[Primary Care research: attitudes and hindrances perceived by our doctors]

To discover how much research doctors in our area do; to describe their attitudes to research; and to evaluate the hindrances to developing research that they found.

Cross-sectional, descriptive study.

Area 7 of Primary Care, Madrid.

Area 7 doctors.

An anonymous self-administered questionnaire was designed in order to gather the following information: age, gender, professional details, training in research methodology, research activity, questions from a previously validated questionnaire for finding attitudes towards research (scores from 0 to 80), and a question for assigning a value to 6 hindrances to research.

174 were returned (49.4% response). 65.9% of the doctors were women, with an average age of 43.23+/-7.33 years; and 55.5% were specialists in Family and Community Medicine. Over the last 5 years, 49.4% had published a scientific paper and 38% had given reports at congresses. The mean score on attitudes to research was 53.49+/-10.59. Hindrances to research were given in the following order, from greatest to least: case-load, lack of time, structural deficiencies, absence of multi-centred research lines, lack of incentives, lack of training, no motivation.

The research activity of our doctors is similar to that found in other studies. Attitude to research is no better than "acceptable." The main hindrances stated were: case-load and lack of time.