Knowledge of rare diseases among health care students – the effect of targeted education
Poor knowledge on rare diseases (RD) results in a significant delay in their diagnosis and treatment. So far there are no standards of university education in RD. We assessed knowledge on RD among healthcare students and the effectiveness of targeted education. We conducted an internet-based survey among students of the faculty of medicine, pharmacy and health sciences. Questions regarded personal information, definition and epidemic data on RD. The survey was used to assess the effect of targeted education about RD in an additional group of students. We enrolled 270 students (females: n=181; 67%), aged 22±1.7 years. Most of them (87.8%) declared to be familiar with the term RD. However only 20.7% knew the correct definition of RD, 14% knew that RD affect a significant (6-8%) proportion of population, 21.4% that there are 5-8 thousands of different RD’ entities, 73.7% recognized the most common cause of RD. 12.6% knew, that the RD most frequently occur in the adulthood. Targeted education applied in the additional group of 18 students resulted in a significant improvement of students’ knowledge on RD: definition (by 33%; p=0.007), percentage of population affected by RD (by 67%; p=0.001 ), total number of different RD (by 61%; p=0.003), time of onset of RD (by 61% p=0.003). Despite the declared recognition of the term: RD, knowledge on RD among medical students is poor independently on the year of study. However it can be improved with use of targeted education.