Psoriasis and high school students: An educational approach

BACKGROUND. To date, no study evaluating the knowledge of psoriasis among high school students has been conducted. Thus, we aimed to examine the awareness of such disease among teenagers as well as the possible changes in both the perception of psoriasis and comprehension level after an interactive lesson. METHODS: A school-based survey was conducted in March 2016 on 300 high school students aged 14-18 years. The survey followed a threestep process. Initially, the questionnaire was administered to students in a 30 minutes period. Subsequently, a dermatologist held a lesson of 120 minutes on various features of psoriasis. Few hours after the presentation, the same questionnaire was re-administered to the same students in order to assess the degree of learning. RESULTS: Two-hundred and fifty students completed the survey. In the prelesson evaluation, the mean score was 5.9±4.5 (range 0-14). Students improved their baseline scores by an average of 6.3 points in the absolute score in the postlessons questionnaire results (mean value =12.2±1.9). Scores gained in postlesson test were statistically significant improved compared to prelesson examination (P±0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrated that psoriasis awareness among young subjects is very low and needs to be increased, through specific educational programs.