Fig. 5

Results of in-class on-line surveys on perception of the importance of learning about rare conditions. Students were asked about their perception of the importance of learning about conditions with differing prevalence, both before (open bars) and after (filled black bars) the in-class computer simulation. Both relative percentages (bars) and numbers of respondents are provided (over bars). Students were asked their opinion on how important it is to learn about conditions with prevalence ranging from 1/500 patients, to 1/million patients. There were 89 respondents to the first survey, and 77 respondents to the second survey. Statistical significance was evaluated by the Chi-Squared test, grouping results for ‘unimportant’ with ‘slightly important’, as well as results for ‘quite important’ and ‘very important’. While there was no significant change in student perception of the importance of learning about conditions with a prevalence of 1/500 patients, a clear increase in perception of the importance of learning about rare conditions was seen for conditions with progressively lower prevalence (p < 0.005 for 1/5000 patients; p < 0.0001 for 1/ 10,000 to 1/1,000,000 patients)