OBJECTIVES: To characterize, in diabetic patients, the prevalence of complications of the disease, the frequency of self-monitoring, and to explore the relationship between these aspects and patient’s health related quality of life (HRQoL). METHODS: Diabetic patients were recruited through community pharmacies, in a descriptive national cross-sectional study. Two structured questionnaires were used to collect patients’ data. One, administered by the pharmacist, to characterize patients’ complications and self-monitoring of the disease, and a second one, a self-administered diabetes-specific quality of life questionnaire - “Audit of Diabetes Dependent Quality of Life (ADDQoL)” (Portuguese version 6.6.02). ADDQoL has 2 general items (current HRQoL and overall impact of diabetes on the HRQoL and 18 specific items. Statistical analysis (package SAS), included 95% confidence intervals for average weighted impact score estimates. A generalized linear model (GLM) was performed to assess the relationship between QoL and the other variables involved. RESULTS: A total of 1479 diabetic patients were involved, 53.7% females, mean age 64.1 years old, 19% with BMI less than 25 kg/m2. A total of 73% patients reported doing glucose self-monitoring at least twice a month. Self-monitoring of feet, weight and blood pressure was never done by 30%, 14% and 7%, respectively. A total of 80.2% of all patients reported using oral hypoglycaemic drugs only, 10.4% only insulin and 9.4% combined therapy (oral antidiabetic drugs and insulin) The ADDQoL AWI score showed a negative impact of diabetes in QoL (CI 95%: -1.96 - -1.79). The GLM Model showed that BMI, education level, insulin dependency, self-monitoring of glycaemia, retinopathy and neuropathy were associated with patients’ AWI score. CONCLUSIONS: Although glucose self-monitoring was done by the majority of the patients, monitoring for diabetes complications is still far from ideal. As expected, diabetes has a negative impact on diabetic patient’s quality of life, some variables were identified to contribute to a worst perceived QoL.