Chamber and committees

Do you think that there is a role for us, as MSPs, with regard to our connectivity on social media? Sometimes social media is not the best platform for communicating things, but social media could be used in a different, more positive way to support good communication. I was recently at an event in Dumfries and Galloway at which Dr Heather Currie spoke to 100 women in the room about the menopause. She is a total champion for destigmatising menopause and communicating an understanding about what it is all about. As MSPs, do we, too, have a role in communication?

I will pick up on ScotGEM. I recently met the chief executive officer of NHS Dumfries and Galloway, Jeff Ace, who said that the retention of ScotGEM graduates in Dumfries and Galloway was excellent.

I have an article here that says that 55 people have completed the first four-year graduate entry to medicine programme, which is unique to Scotland. My colleagues in Ireland, as part of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, are looking to Scotland to learn about ScotGEM so that they can maybe implement it elsewhere.

I am interested in your findings regarding ScotGEM. Is it successful? Has it proved to be supporting rural recruitment for general practice across either side of the central belt?

Good morning, everybody, and good morning to Pam Nicoll online.

I am interested in issues around the impact of the national centre for remote and rural healthcare. I am thinking about actions, the delivery of the strategy and plans. We have had previous papers, including papers from the remote and rural areas resources initiative and the review of the 1912 Dewar commission paper, for example. Professor Jason Leitch has spoken about the Nuka system of care in Alaska, which is about community-owned delivery of healthcare rather than it being done to people. I remind everybody that I am a nurse—I remember Professor Jason Leitch talking to us about rural healthcare in the late 1990s.

I am interested in how NES will ensure that the work of the centre focuses not only on strategy development but on actions, delivery and impact.

Sheila Duffy will know that Dr Jonathan Coutts came to a meeting of the cross-party group on lung health, which I co-convene. We had a presentation on vaping, especially among young people. Given the targeting, I am really concerned about a raft of new interstitial lung diseases—I raise that because I have close links with Phyllis Murphie, who is a nurse consultant in respiratory medicine and who happens to be my sister.

We have explored future lung ill health among young people. Dr Coutts talked about the alarming rise in the number of teens who are using e-cigarettes, from 3 to 43 per cent, which has reversed a lot of the work to eliminate nicotine exposure and then addiction. Whether or not use is illicit, how concerned are you that young people are being exposed directly to nicotine, which will harm them?

Do we need to revise how we support people to quit smoking? The NHS “Quit Your Way Scotland” service is part of that support.

I said interstitial lung disease, not pulmonary fibrosis, and I was not talking about nicotine but the other inhalable substances or components that are in there.

Good morning, everybody. I want to pick up on a question from Ivan McKee about data. As a registered nurse, I understand that when somebody comes into the hospital through a medical assessment unit they are asked, “Do you smoke—yes or no?” If it is yes, they are offered a smoking cessation pathway. Is that question extended to ask, “Do you smoke or vape?”, with smoking cessation then offered in that way?

Also, what do we do in paediatric admissions? It is rather difficult to ask paediatric patients that question, especially if their mum or dad is sitting there. For example, when they come in with shortness of breath, the first thing that we think is that it might be an asthma attack, but it might not be; it might be as a result of high doses of nicotine in vaping, for instance. Are we pursuing that now? I understand that people in some health boards ask about that, but others do not.

Jonathan Coutts’s work shows that a lot of companies quote research by Nutt et al that says that e-cigarettes are 95 per cent safer than standard cigarettes, but that study involved 12 people who were invited to take part and it was not peer reviewed. Two of the people who participated also had financial links with the vaping industry. Will you jog my memory on the argument that e-cigarettes are 95 per cent safer?

Is there a danger that a flavour ban could deter adult smokers from switching to vapes? I know that encouraging people to stop smoking is very complicated. If we banned flavours, would that make it harder for people to stop smoking?

Earlier, I talked about smoking cessation and questions that are asked when people are admitted to hospital, for example. Do the colours and the sweetie flavours that you have talked about inhibit cessation of nicotine device use? How can we support a better transition to help people to move away from cigarettes? I know that some people use e-cigarettes to help smoking cessation, but where are we now with regard to the way that flavours and colours have been used to encourage people to pick up e-cigarettes?