Aiming at identifying the relationship between the elderly patient facing drug prescription and health professionals, an exploratory and descriptive study of a qualitative cut was carried out using semi-structured interviews. To this end, the Collective Subject Discourse analysis technique was employed. Thirty elderly patients living in the urban area of Maring (Paran State, Brazil) were sampled. They were interviewed from February 25 to March 22, 1998 and selected from the Co-participatory pharmacy database of the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, Universidade Estadual de Maring. The finding supplied eleven central Collective Subject ideas, with different discourses. The rich material provided by the study allows better understanding of the factual reality of the elderly facing drug prescription and their relationship with health professionals. (Contains 1 footnote, 5 charts, and 4 tables.)