Following our summer recess, we are delighted at EBN to welcome new and established Tweeters to our next series of Twitter chats. We have an exciting range of topics planned, starting on Wednesday the 7^th of September 8-9pm (UK/BST) with a debate on developments in respiratory care hosted by Jacqui Pollington a respiratory nurse specialist (Jacqui.Pollington@midyorks.nhs.uk).  She leads a home oxygen assessment and review service and an outreach service for patients who are frequently admitted with exacerbations of respiratory disease.

Participating in the twitter chat requires a Twitter account; if you do not already have one you can create an account at www.twitter.com. Once you have an account contributing is straightforward – follow the discussion by searching links to #ebnjc or @EBNursingBMJ, or better still, create a tweet (tweets are text messages limited to 140 characters) to @EBNursingBMJ and add #ebnjc (the EBN chat hash tag) at the end of your tweet, this allows everyone taking part to view your tweets.

The last 10 years have seen significant advances in the diagnosis and management of non malignant respiratory disease. There are around 11 inhaler devices available now, and in total around 25 choices depending on drug, dose and combination required – all to treat airways disease, be that asthma, COPD or….dare I say, ACOS (asthma/copd overlap syndrome). Phenotyping could be considered the vogue, but it is very likely in the era of personalised medicine that phenotyping is here to stay and therefore significantly expand the diagnostic workup currently undertaken by many in primary care. The increasing identification of multi-morbidity in COPD and the profound effects of some comorbidity (for example, the biggest co-morbid predictor of death in the female with COPD is anxiety) brings another clinical dimension to respiratory care. In this context, how does the nurse dealing with a patient with obstructive respiratory disease keep up to date in this very changeable clinical landscape.

https://www.nice.org.uk/Guidance/cg101

https://www.guidelines.co.uk/gold/copd

This twitter chat will focus on the following key themes:

• NICE or GOLD in COPD? Which guidance should we be following and why?
• ICS or not? That is the question? And after the pneumonia? Do we involve patients in the decision?
• Pulmonary rehab….why wait til MRC3?
• Smoking – how do we expose the elephant in the room? What do respiratory clinicians know about addiction?
• How can nursing influence lung health?