[Profile of the over-user of a health center]

Abstract

Objective: To find the sociodemographic and family characteristics of our Health Centre's over-user, along with the connection between psychological malaise, family dysfunction and greater or lesser attendance.

Design: We carried out a descriptive crossover study, after a prior simple random sampling.

Setting: La Felguera Health Centre (Asturias) in 1993.

Patients: We studied 276 over-users, defining as such someone who consulted 6 or more times during the year of the study (percentage > 75), with bureaucratic and scheduled visits being excluded.

Interventions: We used personal interviews with questionnaires to find: Family function (applying the family Apgar Test); psychological malaise (using the Goldberg General Health questionnaire in its reduced 28-item version); and sociodemographic characteristics (with a test composed by ourselves).

Measurements and main results: Average age of the over-user was 54 +/- 19. They were mainly women (72.1%). 51.1% were house-wives and only 25.75% had more than a primary education. 67.8% belonged to nuclear families and 8.3% to dysfunctional families. We found psychological malaise in 40.7%, with a statistically significant relationship between this and women (p < 0.05).

Conclusions: The profile of the over-user of our health centre is a middle-aged housewife with a low level of education, who is part of a nuclear family. A high proportion suffer psychological malaise, but family dysfunction is not determinant.