Pharmacy and Medicine Students' Self-assessment of Their Knowledge about Rare Diseases

Aim: The aim of this study was to describe the knowledge of pharmacy and medicine students about rare diseases.

Methodology: This is a cross sectional study that was conducted in January 2021. The study included a questionnaire that was adapted from a previous study. The questionnaire was translated to Arabic and after validation it was converted to online form to be filled by the students.

Results: Most of the students were pharmacy students (60.78%) and the majority of them were females (72.55%). Only 11.76% of the students reported that their knowledge is very good about rare diseases. About 52.94% of them said that they are prepared for caring for patients with rare diseases. The majority of the students agreed that they need to broad their knowledge about rare diseases (97.06%). More than half of the students said that they get knowledge about rare disease from internet (51.96%) and scientific literature and research (48.04%).

Conclusion: The present study showed poor knowledge of pharmacy and medicine students about rare diseases. There is an urgent need to raise the awareness of medical students on rare diseases and educate them about these diseases by adding a course on rare diseases in their medical curricula.