OBJECTIVES: The ICARE programme‘s objective is to asses patients’ knowledge of the consequences of sun exposure. Its specificity and relevance are based on the fact that patients will be asked to fill in the questionnaire after a sunburn. METHODS: Every patient coming to an outpatient pharmacy in order to obtain an advice or treatment following a sunburn was remitted a questionnaire assessing the consequences of sun exposure. The Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) is a validated questionnaire to measure and compare disability in different skin conditions. RESULTS: First results showed evidence of a QoL impairment with a mean DLQI total scores of 4.0. Men and women mean total scores were respectively: 2.7 vs. 4.9 (p<0.05). The mean number of impacts was 2.3, patients were allocated according to the number of impacts. For patients with three impacts and less the mean DLQI total score was 3.3; it was 6.8 for patients with 4 impacts or more (p>0.0001). The patient’s perception of their sun sensitivity had a very strong impact on patients’ QoL, the more sensitive, the more QoL was impaired (p<0.005). The use of sunscreen has an impact on QoL the more patients use sunscreen, the better their QoL was (p<0.0005). All the symptoms associated with the sunburn impaired the QoL (p<0.05) except the skin peeling. Further analysis demonstrated that age was not interacting with the scores, neither was the activity when the sunburn occurs. CONCLUSIONS: Our population reflect a QoL impairment compared to the ranges obtained when initially validating the DLQI; i.e. for patients suffering acne the DLQI mean score was 4.3, it was 6.7 for patients with viral wart and 3.4 for patients with solar keratosis. Those results confirm the ones obtained during a previous study among pharmacy’s staff demonstrating a link between QoL impairment and sunburns severity.