[Use of ineffective practices in Primary Health Care: professional opinions]

To estimate the frequency of ineffective practices in Primary Health Care (PHC) based on the opinions of clinical professionals from the sector, and to assess the significance, implications and factors that may be contributing to their continuance.

An on line survey of opinion from a convenience sample of 575 professionals who had published articles over the last years in Atención Primaria and Semergen medical journals.

A total of 212 professionals replied (37%). For 70.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 64.5 to 73.3) the problem of ineffective practices is frequent or very frequent in PHC, and rate their importance with an average score of 7.3 (standard deviation [SD]=1.8) out of 10. The main consequences would be endangering the sustainability of the system (48.1%; 95% CI, 41.2 to 54.9) and harming patients (32.1%; 95% CI, 25.7 to 38.5). These ineffective practices are the result of the behaviour of the patients themselves (28%; 95% CI, 22.6 to 35.0) workload (26.4%; 95% CI, 20.3 to 32.5), and the lack of the continuous education (19.3%; 95% CI, 13.9 to 24.7). Clinical procedures of greatest misuse are the prescribing of antibiotics for certain infections, the frequency of cervical cancer screening, rigorous pharmacological monitoring of type 2 diabetes in patients over 65 years, the use of psychotropic drugs in the elderly, or the use of analgesics in patients with hypertension or renal failure.

The use of ineffective procedures in PHC is considered a very important issue that negatively affects many patients and their treatment, and possibly endangering the sustainability of the system and causing harm to patients.