Terms of Use and Privacy notices

Please read the following terms and conditions, which apply to any use made by you of information or other material contained on the www.plymouthhospitals.nhs.uk website.  The use of www.plymouthhospitals.nhs.uk website is subject to the following terms and conditions. In entering our site you as a user are accepting our terms and conditions. They take effect from the date on which you first use this website.

Use of website

The www.plymouthhospitals.nhs.uk website is maintained for your personal use and viewing. You agree to use this site only for lawful purposes, and in a manner that does not infringe the rights of, or restrict or inhibit the use and enjoyment of this site by any third party. Such restriction or inhibition includes, without limitation, conduct which is unlawful, or which may harass or cause distress or inconvenience to any person, and the transmission of obscene or offensive content or disruption of normal flow of dialogue within this site. You also agree that you shall not make any use of the website such that the whole or part of the website is interrupted, damaged, rendered less efficient, or the effectiveness or functionally of the website is in any way impaired and that you will not use the website for the transmission or posting of any computer viruses.

Copyright

The material on this site is subject to copyright protection of Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust unless otherwise indicated. This copyright protected material (other than any organisational logos) may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium for the purposes of research, private study or for internal circulation within an organisation. This is subject to the material being reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context.

Where any of the items on this site are being republished or copied to others, the source of the material must be clearly identified and the copyright status acknowledged.

The permission to reproduce Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust copyright protected material does not extend to any material on this site that is identified as being the copyright of a third party. Authorisation to reproduce such material must be obtained from the copyright holders.

Intellectual property

The names, images, and logos within Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust website are the proprietary marks of the NHS. Copying and using our logos or any other third party logos accessed via this website is not permitted without the prior approval of the relevant copyright owner.

Links policy

The Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust website contains links to various websites that are operated by third parties over whom we have no control. Links are provided for information and convenience only. We cannot accept responsibility for the sites linked to, or the information found there. We cannot guarantee that these links will work all of the time and we have no control over the availability of the linked pages. A link does not imply the endorsement of a site; likewise, not linking to a particular site does not imply lack of endorsement. We therefore do not make any representation - and do not accept any liability - in respect of the content, products or services available from such websites, or the business of such third parties. Any dealings with advertisers and merchants accessed using the www.plymouthhospitals.nhs.uk website shall be entirely at your own risk.

Links to

The Trust encourages users to establish hypertext links to the www.plymouthhospitals.nhs.uk site. However, we do not permit our pages to be loaded into frames on another site. The pages must load into the user’s entire window.

Accuracy

We endeavour to ensure that the information contained in this website is both accurate and complete.  However, we accept no responsibility for any damages or loss arising from the use of this information. We endeavour to ensure content on the www.plymouthhospitals.nhs.uk website could not be deemed offensive to an individual or a collection of individuals, and that content adheres to common principles of decency and taste. However, we do not accept any liability for any content published by contributors through any pages.

Availability

We cannot guarantee uninterrupted access to this website, or the sites to which it links.

Virus protection

We make every effort to check and test material at all stages of production. It is always wise for you to run an anti-virus program on all material downloaded from the internet. We cannot accept any responsibility for any loss, disruption or damage to your data or your computer system that may occur while using material derived from this website.

Information you submit via our website is protected using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL/TLS) software, which encrypts information you input into electronic forms. However the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure and therefore we cannot guarantee the security of data sent to us electronically and transmission of such data is entirely at your own risk.

The Trust will treat personal information sent via this website as confidential. No personal information, including email addresses, will be shared with third parties or commercial organisations for the purposes of advertising or data warehousing.

Find out more about our privacy notices and how University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust uses your information

The Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust website uses cookies for the purposes outlined in this policy.

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

Essential Cookies

This website makes use of Essential Cookies, as defined in the UK GDPR, in order to function and to improve your security, e.g. when submitting forms. These Essential Cookies are only for security and site function, and do not track individuals in any way.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to help us understand how visitors engage with our website to make improvements.  Google sets cookies on your browser for this purpose and collects information anonymously. It reports website trends without identifying individual visitors.

You have the option to decline these cookies by selecting ‘Decline’ on our cookie banner.  If you choose this option, our site will still work correctly but some content may not display.

• Please read Google Analytics Cookie Usage on Websites for more information.
• Google Privacy policy https://policies.google.com/privacy

Type of Cookies

We use the following type of cookies:

• Necessary. Necessary cookies are essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
• Analytics. Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

Cookie types

Cookie	Duration	Description
JSESSIONID	Session	Essential cookie for software functionality including session management for authentication, form submission validation, load-balancer configuration. Secured and does not track across websites (domain-specific). Expires at explicit session end (i.e. explicit log out) or 20 minutes of inactivity.
TS0xxxxxxx	Session	Essential cookie for maintaining context across multiple high-availability application servers and secure Web Application Firewall (WAF). Secured and does not track across websites (domain-specific).  Expires at explicit session end (i.e. explicit log out) or 20 minutes of inactivity.
VOPECRA	'Permanent' (multi-year duration)	Remembers that a user has accepted cookies from website, enabling cookies from GA and Code Droplets (where configured). Secured and does not track across websites (domain-specific).
CONSENT – Google Analytics and Tag Manager		Communicates users’ cookie or app identifier consent status to Google. Tags adjust their behaviour and respect users’ choices.
NID	1 year	The NID cookie contains a unique ID Google uses to remember your preferences and other information, such as your preferred language (e.g. English), how many search results you wish to have shown per page (e.g. 10 or 20), and whether or not you wish to have Google's SafeSearch filter turned on.
_ga	2 years	Google analytics. Used to distinguish users.
_ga_	2 years	Google analytics. Used to persist session state.
visid_incap_*	1 year	The cookie on which Imperva relate sessions to a specific visitor (visitor representing a specific browser on a specific computer)
incap_ses_*	Session	Used for session handling by Imperva.

 

Managing cookies on your device

Most modern browsers allow you to manage cookies saved on your computer. For example, you may wish to accept all cookies, delete specific website cookies or reject all cookies.

You can find out how to manage cookie settings on Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Mobile (Android and iOS) by visiting About Cookies.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about our cookies or this cookies policy, please contact us: communications.phnt@nhs.net.

The Trust uses social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram to provide information to people that use our services, their carers and the wider public. We welcome comments and engagement with our posts and the digital content we post on our social media accounts.

The Trust Communications team manage the platforms, alongside admin staff from our services. These staff are not medical professionals or clinicians. If you need help from a specific Trust service you should get in touch directly using the contact details you have been given.

We know and respect that people may have different views and experiences they want to share on social media, but the Trust will not tolerate or accept any form of cyber-bullying on our platforms.

We will act if content in any format (such as comments, videos, images, GIFs, attachments, links or emojis) is interpreted as:

• Defamatory, slanderous, misleading, or false
• Abusive or threatening – this includes swearing, adapted spellings with the same meaning, etc
• Intimidatory towards our staff, elected members, or other platform users
• Mentions a staff member or service user by name, making them identifiable to others
• Containing allegations against staff or other service users
• Inciting hate crime or hate crime words
• Obscene, profane, or sexually-oriented
• Discriminatory in any way
• Promoting illegal activity
• Promoting individual products or services
• Completely off-topic
• The same message posted many times, otherwise known as ‘spamming’
• Controversial, irrelevant, and off-topic, otherwise known as ‘trolling’

The action we will take

If your content falls into the categories listed above, the Trust may take steps to hide or delete the post. Our approach will be to:

Respond to your content and/or direct message. We will explain the reason we deem the post to be inappropriate and ask you to remove the post immediately.

If you do not respond in a timely manner, we will have no option but to block your access to our social media accounts. We will let you know before we do this.

In serious cases such as allegations against staff or if the content is part of an investigation or could be deemed a safeguarding issue, we will have no option but to immediately remove the comment.

If we see frequent posts and comments that are deemed as inflammatory, misleading, controversial or many posts which may cause distress, we will take immediate action to block your account. We will not have time to tell you we are doing this.

In some cases, we may take action to screenshot a post or post and save them offline. We will store these in line with GDPR guidelines and in some cases, we may alert or forward posts to service managers, the police or partner organisations, if there is a need to raise awareness of the content or if it is to be used to support action that will be taken including an investigation.

Personal cases

The Trust will not discuss information relating to an individual on a social media platform – even if the case relates to you or someone known to you. In these circumstances we want people to talk to us directly, the Trust take your concerns seriously and we would encourage you in the first instance to talk directly to the service. You can find the contact details of our services, or if you wish to discuss your care or treatment, submit a compliment or complaint, you can do this by contacting our PALS team For independent support, you can contact local Healthwatch organisations.

Hate crime

Hate crime is defined as any incident that is seen by the victim (or any other person) as being motivated by prejudice or hate towards their actual or perceived social identity. The law recognises five types of hate crime based on:

• Race
• Religion
• Disability
• Sexual orientation
• Transgender identity

In these instances where the law recognises any hate and harassment as a crime then action will be taken in line with criminal or non-criminal behaviour is described as actions such as offensive comments or images on social media or text messages.

Safeguarding

The Trust has a duty of care to protect vulnerable adults and children that we meet or encounter from abuse and harm. The Trust have safeguarding policies in place which will be referred to if a safeguarding issue has been identified. Action on any content that can be deemed a safeguarding issue will mean that the posts/posts will be saved offline and passed on to the relevant organisation to ensure we retain our duty of care.

Threatening behaviour and allegations against staff and elected members

We have a zero-tolerance to threatening behaviour on our social media accounts and we will immediately remove any content that can be deemed as threatening, harassment or could cause distress to our staff or elected members. We may screenshot posts and forward them to colleagues within our Trust, the police and partner organisations.

Hours

We monitor our social media between the hours of 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.

We may not respond to questions or complaints outside these hours even if we are posting from our accounts.