Objectives: To find the attitudes of primary care doctors to excess alcohol consumption and to establish the relationships of this with independent variables.

Design: Observational, descriptive, crossover study.

Setting: All the primary care doctors in our region.

Participants: 486 doctors, excluding paediatricians.

Measurements and main results: A closed, anonymous, self-administered survey, consisting of 12 social/demographic and work variables and a questionnaire on attitudes, evaluated by the Likert scale. 227 valid surveys were returned. a) Social/demographic and work variables: 67.6% were males between 36 and 45 years old. 64% had completed their degree course between 1976 and 1985. 55.3% worked in a mixed health centre, with 54.4% holding a permanent post. 61.4% worked in towns of < 20,000 inhabitants, with a case-load of > 40 patients per day (46.6%). b) Validation of the questionnaire on attitudes. 6 factors were found to explain 63% of total variability: factor 1, "interest in on-going training" (2.20); factor 2, "professional reticence" (3.71); factor 3, "job satisfaction" (3.07); factor 4, "legitimacy" (2.12); factor 5, "self-perception of skills" (2.24); factor 6, "self-perception of knowledge" (3.06). c) Associations: 1. The older the doctor, the less reticence in his/her work. 2. Interesting differences in attitudes to on-going training, legitimacy and skills between doctors in different health areas. 3. Those who finished their studies before 1970 were more resistant to on-going training; those who finished between 1971 and 1975, more indifferent to it.

Conclusions: The doctors surveyed saw themselves as having the legitimacy, sufficient skill and lack of reticence to carry out their work with over-users of alcohol. However they were dissatisfied with their insufficient knowledge and broadly wanted on-going training on this question.