[The evaluation of women's health promotion services: the internal client, the external client].

OBJECTIVES: To find the opinion of internal and external customers of the Women's Health Promotion Services; to obtain information about the perceptions and suggestions of both midwives and users of the service.

DESIGN: An observational study of the qualitative evaluation of a service provided in Primary Health Care, through an open questionnaire to midwives and focus groups with users.

SETTING: Health Area 4 in the Community of Valencia.

PARTICIPANTS: 15 midwives from Health Area 4, 3 groups of women using the Pregnancy Follow-up Programme and 3 groups from the Programme of Integrated Care for climacteric women, coming from two Health Districts, one urban and one rural.

MAIN RESULTS: For midwives, coordination with general practitioners was better in the urban setting, and with Family Planning Centres in the rural one. Absence of team work with gynaecologists, and gynaecologists' failure to value midwives' work, were identified as problems.

CONCLUSIONS: Different patterns for the organisation and use of women's health promotion services were identified between the urban and rural setting. The problems of coordination identified by the midwives are not perceived as such by the service's users, who evaluated as satisfactory the Primary Care services received.