Diploma in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (DOHNS) Virtual Learning Environment
Terms and Conditions
1. Introduction
1.1 Welcome to the Diploma in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Virtual Learning Environment (“DO-HNS VLE”) and its related applications (the "Site"). The Site was founded and created by Mr Gordon Arthur George McKenzie, BSc, MB ChB (Hons), PGDip, AFHEA, MRCSEd (ENT) (“Mr McKenzie”) who is a trainee surgeon in otolaryngology. Eustatus Ltd. (Company No.: 11165230) owns and operates the Site and may appoint other people, at its absolute discretion, to post content, peer-review or modify content on the website (collectively 'we', 'us' or 'our').
1.2 Please read these terms and conditions of use (“the Terms") before using the Site. Through the use of the Site you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not wish to be bound by the Terms, you should not use the DO-HNS VLE.
1.3 These Terms may be changed at any time. Any changes will be made to this page, and it is your responsibility as a user to update yourself, by regularly checking for any changes. Changes will become effective immediately after their posting on the Site. By continuing to use the Site after the posting of any changes to these Terms, you automatically accept these changes.
2. Purpose
The Site provides educational content concerning otolaryngology and its associated sciences. We provide regularly updated educational material, practice questions and their answers along with a variety of advice about the Intercollegiate Diploma in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Part 2, Objectively Structured Clinical Examination (the “Exam”) offered by the four national Royal Colleges. References to the sources of information used to produce the content are provided near the bottom of pages under the subtitle “References” or “Bibliography”. We provide a virtual learning environment with educational text, photographs, tables, graphics, links, self-assessment materials and a forum. This site is written exclusively for medical professionals who have undertaken extensive medical study and some clinical practice.
3. Warnings
3.1 The information contained within the Site does not constitute any form of medical advice, recommendation, representation or endorsement by us and is not intended to be relied upon by you in making (or refraining from making) any specific medical or other decisions. This includes under any conditions of academic assessment or any formal professional examination. You should always carry out your own research and verification into the information that is provided on this Site.
3.2 Medical knowledge is constantly changing and it is your responsibility to practice in accordance with local, national or international guidelines as necessary. Before prescribing you must check that any medicinal agent referred to within the Site is indicated and not contraindicated for any patient or other person under your care as a medical practitioner. You should also appreciate any cautions regarding its prescribing and that the dose is correct. You should use a reputable resource such as the most recent version of the British National Formulary and/or local guidelines. The patient should also be fully counselled about the medicinal agent, including any side effects.
3.3 Before recommending any surgical procedure referred to within this Site, you should check that the procedures is indicated and not contraindicated. You should have obtained informed consent from any patient before any medical or surgical procedures, in accordance with guidelines published by the Royal College of Surgeons. Where you have any doubt about any aspect of medical practice referenced by the Site, you should consult relevant guidelines or seek formal advice from another colleague, in accordance with good clinical practice as outlined by the General Medical Council.
4. Images
The Site includes images from a variety of sources. Some images are the personal property of Mr McKenzie who holds their exclusive copyright. Images owned by Mr McKenzie can be identified as those images that do not have an attribution immediately near to their position on the Site. Written permission is required from Mr McKenzie for any use of these images for any purpose other than personal, non-commercial use (See Section 6: Content). Images that have an attribution immediately near to them are either in the public domain and have no restrictions on their use or they are bound by the terms of a respective license. All licenses are provided and linked wherever necessary. All images used under license have been used in good faith. Where any images are not used in accordance with their license or subject to copyright this is accidental. Please contact Mr McKenzie through the Site so that they can be immediately removed and/or permission sought for their use. Some images have been kindly donated by other copyright holders. There written permission has been sought and stored electronically. Attribution to the actual copyright holder will be adjacent to the image and they should be contacted for enquiries as to reuse of their images. If you have any doubt about the use of any image, please check with Mr McKenzie through the contact details provided on the Site.
5. Links
5.1 The Site includes details on and/or links through to information provided by other websites. We do not control, nor can we control, the accuracy or completeness of any information contained on these websites. You take full responsibility for using that information and verifying it. If the link is to any product, such as a book or journal article, you take full responsibility for any decision to use, purchase or refrain from purchasing any of the services or products mentioned on a linked site. If you do purchase products or services from another website, we advise you to please read their contract carefully before deciding to purchase. Your contract for those products or services will be with them, not us. Any personal information you give to other websites will fall under their privacy policies, not ours. Our selection of links is not influenced by any monetary or other financial gain received by any product providers. If the link is to other medical or educational information, then you should apply the same principles as detailed in Section 3: Warnings.
5.2 You are welcome to link to the Site if you comply with the terms set out in this clause and all applicable laws. Any site or service that links to the Site:
5.2.1 must not otherwise use any of our logos without our written consent;
5.2.2 may link only to our homepage if we have given you our prior written consent;
5.2.3 must not in any way imply that we are endorsing it or its products or services;
5.2.4 must not misrepresent its relationship with us or present false information about us;
5.2.5 must not infringe any intellectual property or other rights of any person or otherwise not comply with all relevant laws and regulations;
5.2.6 must not contain content that could be considered distasteful or offensive.
If you breach these terms, then we have the right to require that your link is removed and to take whatever other action we think appropriate.
6. Our content
6.1 All of the content on this Site is owned by us and is protected by English and international copyright laws.
6.2 Our content includes any information or other material found on the DO-HNS VLE, including text, graphics, tables, photographs, the Forum and all other features of the Site. You are only allowed to use our content for personal, non-commercial use. You may make one copy of extracts from this Site on any single computer for personal, individual use only, provided that all copyright and proprietary notices are preserved. Apart from that, none of our content may be republished, posted, transmitted, stored, sold, distributed or modified without our prior written consent.
6.3 All brand names and trade marks that appear on this Site are trade marks or trade names of their respective holders. No permission is given to use of any of these brands or marks and any such use may constitute an infringement of the holders' rights. You may not use the DO-HNS VLE name, DO-HNS VLE logo, tag-lines or any representations thereof without prior written consent.
7. Your content
You own any copyright in the text that you post to our Forum. However, when you post text, you expressly grant us a perpetual, unlimited free licence to republish that text on our Site and to redistribute/make available and/or sell that text in print or electronic form anywhere in the world as part of an edited compilation or otherwise.
8. Forum/Social Media
8.1 We encourage debate and the sharing of information between our users. However, we do require that you use our Forum, Social Media and any other communication systems that we provide lawfully and in accordance with these Terms and Conditions.
8.2 You may not use the Forum, Social Media or any other communication systems for any illegal purpose and in particular you may not:
8.2.1 post or transmit material that infringes the intellectual property or other rights of others, or post or transmit any material that contains extremist views, appears to incite or promote terrorist activities, is unlawful, obscene, libellous, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful, or embarrassing to any other person as determined by us in our sole discretion;
8.2.2 impersonate another person;
8.2.3 disguise the IP address of the connection used to post any message;
8.2.4 post or transmit any files containing viruses or other harmful computer code;
8.2.5 harvest or otherwise collect or use information about others, including email addresses, without their explicit consent;
8.2.6 allow any other person or entity to use your identification for posting or viewing comments or for communicating with other users;
8.2.7 post the same note more than once or 'spam';
8.2.8 knowingly post untrue information about another person or business with the intention of harming their reputation or livelihood;
8.2.9 engage in any other conduct that restricts or inhibits any other person from using or enjoying these areas of our Site, or which, in our judgement, exposes us to any liability or detriment of any type;
8.3 Please note that any posting of information in the Forum, Social Media or any other communications system is the opinion of the person posting only and in no way reflects our opinions or attitudes. You should not rely on information being accurate or complete. If you do, you do so at your own risk.
8.4 We reserve the right to delete comments and/or terminate a user's access to post messages to the Forum where there has been an infringement of the terms outlined in Section 8.2.
9. Refund and Cancellation Policy
9.1 Our Refund Policy specifies our approach to refunds and cancellations in relation solely to the delivery of our online learning educational material. If you feel that our policy as detailed below does not satisfy your query then please do not hesitate to contact us via editor@dohnsvle.co.uk.
9.2 DO-HNS VLE is committed to ensuring adequate delivery of our online content and promises to deal reasonably and appropriately with all queries relating to our online content.
9.3 Where a technical problem has prevented you from accessing the content you have purchased, we will investigate the issue and try to help you resolve the problem. This may involve consulting with our third party domain hosts and content management systems providers. It is important to note that downtime is possible for any server to always be live. Our servers up-time is currently 99.8%. You must have a functioning internet connection and equipment to enable you to use the DO-HNS VLE as delivered over the internet. Providing you have the required connection and equipment, you will receive a full refund pro rata for all unused time purchased, if we are unable to resolve the problem with you. Unused time is that remaining on your subscription when you purchased access to the DO-HNS VLE. This will be specified in the email sent to you informing you that your payment had been received and your membership activated.
9.4 The DO-HNS VLE refund policy is compliant with the EU Distance Selling Directive (2000) and is part of UK law under the Consumer Protection Regulations (2000) (as amended) that relate to distance selling. The law came into force in the year 2000 and is applicable to all UK-based transactions where the consumer does not meet the vendor.
9.5 All access to the DO-HNS VLE is governed by your email address ('username') and unique password. The username and password is part of a system which protects the security of the DO-HNS VLE and enables DO-HNS VLE to monitor usage by any individual. When a refund request is received, DO-HNS VLE reserve the right to track the usage by an individual (through the membership facility of the content management system) of the following: frequency of use, time period of use and specific pages viewed. No refund will be granted if DO-HNS VLE has reason to believe that you have viewed any of the information that you have purchased.
9.6 Any authorised refunds will be processed by DO-HNS VLE within 30 days and will occur through PayPal.
10. Disclaimer of warranties and liability
10.1 The Site is provided in good faith. However, we cannot and do not warrant the completeness, truth or accuracy of the information or other content or postings found on our Site, or their usefulness for any particular purpose. You acknowledge and agree that you bear full responsibility for your own educational research, study and kowledge towards any decisions and that we shall not be liable for any action that you or others take or do not take based on your use of or reliance on information provided by us or other users of our Site.
10.2 We do not and cannot promise that your access to the Site, or its content will be delivered uninterrupted, timely or error-free, or that the Site will be free from viruses or other harmful properties. It is your responsibility to implement satisfactory safeguards and procedures to make sure any files you obtain through our Site are free from such contaminations or other harmful properties.
10.3 The effect of what is set out here is that you agree that under no circumstances will we be held liable for any direct, indirect, incidental or other type of loss or injury to any person resulting from your use, or downloading of any content on the Site.
11. Indemnity
You agree to indemnify, defend and hold us harmless from and against any claim, liability, cost, damage or loss we may incur (including reasonable legal fees) as a result of any material that you post or transmit on our Forum, Social Media or via any other communications systems, any actions you take which disrupt access to and/or the functioning of our Site or any breach by you of your obligations under these Terms.
12. General
12.1 If any of these provisions is deemed invalid, void or unenforceable that provision will be deemed severable from the rest and will not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.
12.2 These Terms shall be governed by the laws of England and any dispute between us will be resolved exclusively in the Courts of England.
13. Contact us
Our Site is owned and operated by Mr Gordon Arthur George McKenzie, BSc, MB ChB (Hons), PGDip, AFHEA, MRCSEd (ENT). His personal address or private numbers cannot be disclosed for confidentiality reasons.
If you have any questions about our Site or these Terms and Conditions, please contact us by email at editor@dohnsvle.co.uk
Posted: 24th January 2018