[Primary care and the power of the health system to solve problems: a study from the professionals' view-point]

To identify professionals' view of the problem-solving capacity of primary care in the health system.

Interpretative study, based on the Grounded Theory method and the focus-group technique.

Eight primary care centres.

In all, 198 professionals: 86 physicians, 69 nurse and 43 who were not health professionals.

Data were obtained by: open questions in the focus groups, recording and transcription of the contributions; division of the text into autonomous sense units; sense units grouped by their common characteristics; inductive definition of each category; relationship between categories and triangulation of inter-team data.

The problem-solving capacity of professionals should be characterized by: care for the bio-psycho-social demands and needs of the population; the integration of the following dimensions of professional competence: communication and teamwork; the promotion of prevention and public education. However, health-care daily practice prioritised quantitative parameters linked to reactive actions that were distant from the singularity of patients' pathologies.

The desired problem-solving capacity of primary health care is threatened by excessive quantitative measurement, by shortcomings in human resources and facilities, and by the well-known lack of time in health-care delivery.