Ms Vicky McGrath:

The short answer is "Yes". There is very limited structured coursework on rare conditions available through the universities. A consideration of the type of education that is needed is part of the need for joined-up thinking around the delivery of a new plan. Certainly, more education on rare diseases needs to be provided. As Dr. Lynch mentioned, even simply alerting nursing students to the existence of genetic conditions would be helpful. Many of their patients will have such conditions but they are not being provided with the skills to enable them to understand what exactly is going on. There definitely is a lot of work to be done on the education system.