Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S4O-04256

Asked by: Nanette Milne, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 April 2015
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 29 April 2015

To ask the Scottish Government how many cases have been reported to ministers of private and confidential information held on patients being lost, left in public places or breached.

Question reference: S4O-04235

Asked by: Nanette Milne, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 April 2015
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 23 April 2015

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will use consequential funding to help provide defibrillators in public places.

Question reference: S4W-25070

Asked by: Nanette Milne, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 March 2015
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 7 April 2015

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that all rheumatoid arthritis patients are seen by a nurse specialist within one month of diagnosis.

Rheumatoid arthritis can be a debilitating condition and the Scottish Government is committed to supporting people living with the illness, as well as their families and carers.

We want to ensure that everyone who requires care has access to the highest standards of care in every setting, in an NHS facility, or care home, or their own home. That is why we are integrating health and social care to provide a more responsive and joined-up service for all those who require care. It is for each individual NHS board to plan and deliver services to meet the needs of their local population, taking account of available evidence and good practice guidance. We expect NHS boards to ensure that patients with rheumatoid arthritis have appropriate access to a range of professionals, including specialist nurses, to ensure optimum management of their condition.

Question reference: S4W-25068

Asked by: Nanette Milne, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 March 2015
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 2 April 2015

To ask the Scottish Government how many rheumatology nurse specialists there are, broken down by NHS board; whether it considers the provision to be adequate, and for what reason.

Information on the number of rheumatology clinical nurse specialists in each NHS board as at 30 September 2014 is shown in Table 1.

It is the responsibility of each individual NHS board to ensure they have the right person in place at the right time to ensure they can provide safe, effective and high quality care for their patients.

Due to the multidisciplinary nature of the role, a nurse may work in more than one specialty; however only one specialist area is recorded for each nurse. The figures shown do not include those who spend part of their time working in rheumatology but have been recorded against another specialty. Care provided is also multidisciplinary, involving nursing, medical and allied health professional skills, knowledge and awareness. For those reasons, patients in boards without specialist nurse provision indicated are fully able to access high quality rheumatology services.

Table 1: Rheumatology clinical nurse specialist staff in post as at 30 September 2014.

	Whole time equivalent
Scotland	29.6
NHS Ayrshire and Arran	2.0
NHS Borders	0.6
NHS Dumfries and Galloway	0.6
NHS Fife	-
NHS Forth Valley	-
NHS Grampian	-
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde	17.3
NHS Highland	2.0
NHS Lanarkshire	2.0
NHS Lothian	2.9
NHS Orkney	-
NHS Shetland	-
NHS Tayside	1.9
NHS Western Isles	0.2

Source: Scottish Workforce Information standard System (SWISS); Information Services Division Scotland.

Question reference: S4W-25089

Asked by: Nanette Milne, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 25 March 2015
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 1 April 2015

To ask the Scottish Government which NHS boards operate a telephone helpline for rheumatology services; what assessment has been made of the impact that each has had on (a) patient wellbeing and (b) pressure on GP services, and what its position on setting up a national helpline.

Question reference: S4W-24935

Asked by: Nanette Milne, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 17 March 2015
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 31 March 2015

To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to encourage an increase in the training of first aiders in (a) schools and colleges and (b) workplaces.

The Scottish Government recognises the valuable role that first aid skills can play in delivering better outcomes and experience for patients, avoiding unnecessary hospital attendances, and strengthening and empowering local communities to make them safer and healthier.

In recognition of this, we have worked in partnership with organisations such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, the Child Accident Prevention Trust, Barnardos and Volunteer Development Scotland. We provide financial support for work on injury prevention and safety initiatives and our commitment to this important agenda is set out in a range of policies and frameworks including the Curriculum for Excellence and National Parenting Strategy.

Work to tackle unintentional injuries takes place across a wide range of policy areas including road safety, fire safety and inland water safety for example and we seek to ensure that good practice is shared across these diverse areas of activity. The Scottish Ambulance Service also works with a range of partners to support community resilience, including health boards and healthcare professionals, the emergency services, community groups, carers’ organisations, schools and nurseries, and charitable and voluntary organisations.

As a specific illustration of our activity to increase skills within our communities, the government published its Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest Strategy (OHCA) on Friday 27 March 2015, which aims to improve all of the key elements of the ‘Chain of Survival’, including defibrillation. All patients who have a survivable cardiac arrest require CPR and the majority also require defibrillation, both of which must be applied in a matter of minutes in order to be successful. CPR and defibrillation can be performed by ambulance first responders, other first responders in the community, or bystanders (if equipment and instruction are made rapidly available). The interplay of these key elements forms the ‘Chain of Survival’ which a person must successfully pass through in order to go home from hospital neurologically intact. The OHCA strategy includes an aim to equip an additional 500,000 people with CPR skills by 2020. Increasing the incidence of bystander CPR is the cornerstone of improving outcomes because prompt bystander CPR can increase the likelihood of survival after OHCA by two or three times.

Question reference: S4W-24934

Asked by: Nanette Milne, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 17 March 2015
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 31 March 2015

To ask the Scottish Government what it is doing to increase the number of first aiders.

Question reference: S4W-25106

Current Status: Withdrawn

Question reference: S4W-25069

Current Status: Withdrawn

Question reference: S4O-04130

Asked by: Nanette Milne, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 11 March 2015
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 18 March 2015

To ask the Scottish Government what recent discussions have taken place between the SQA and local authorities regarding pupils' career advice and subject choice.