Terms and Conditions

Copyright

The material on this site is subject to copyright protection of Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. The copyright protected material may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium for 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 copyright items on this site are being republished or copied to others, the source of the material must be identified and the copyright status acknowledged. The permission to reproduce Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust 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.

Links policy

All links from this website are selected using our links policy. Links are provided for information and convenience only. We cannot accept responsibility for the sites linked to or the information found there. A link does not imply an endorsement of a site; likewise, not linking to a particular site does not imply lack of endorsement.

You do not have to ask permission to link directly to pages hosted on this site. However, we do not permit our pages to be loaded into frames on your site. The pages must load into the user’s entire window. You must not use the NHS logo to link to our site without prior permission.

Accuracy

Every effort is taken to ensure that the information contained in this website is both accurate and complete.

Availability

We cannot guarantee uninterrupted access to this website, or the sites to which it links. We accept no responsibility for any damages arising from the loss of use of this information.

Intellectual property

The names, images and logos identifying Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust are the proprietary marks of the NHS. Copying our logos and any third party logos accessed via this website is not permitted without the prior approval of the relevant copyright owner.

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.

Privacy statements

Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust’s website does not store or capture personal information, but merely logs the user's IP address that is automatically recognised by the web server. We do not use cookies for collecting user information and we will not collect any information about you except that required for system administration or our web server.

The Information Standard

Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust shall hold responsibility for the accuracy of the information they publish and neither the Scheme Operator nor the Scheme Owner shall have any responsibility whatsoever for costs, losses or direct or indirect damages or costs arising from inaccuracy of information or omissions in information published on the website on behalf of Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

The following user-generated information is excluded from the scope of certification: weblogs, forums and personal experience pages – except where personal experience pages have been produced through a systematic process of validation.

Social media guidelines

We use social media at Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust for a number of reasons. Examples include: 

• providing information about the Trust and the services it provides
• sharing success stories and/or new developments
• sharing advice
• sharing upcoming events
• to engage with the public and gather opinions to help shape ongoing improvements at the Trust

We ask that people follow our guidelines below when interacting on our social media channels.

• be respectful of others and their opinions
• do not make personal attacks in your comments
• do not post content that is discriminatory, obscene, inflammatory, harassing, hateful, threatening, profane or personally abusive
• do not post anything that could be libellous or defamatory: if an accusation is made against a named person, for example at a member of staff, we will hide it
• do not post adverts for commercial products or services
• do not post repeatedly about issues that are off-topic i.e. spam

On Facebook we use filters to automatically hide obscenities and will use our own discretion to hide comments that go against our guidelines. On rare occasions, we may block users from the page if the nature of their comments does not change, but we will always warn you of this and highlight our guidelines before doing so.

Our social media channels are moderated daily all year round, with reduced hours on weekends and bank holidays. If you have sent us a direct message on one of our channels we will always endeavour to get back to you as soon as possible, but if your enquiry is urgent please call our switchboard on 01305 251150.

If your direct message is in regards to a complaint, please email our Patient Experience Team at pals@dchft.nhs.uk

If you are concerned about a post or a comment on one of our social media channels please email communications@dchft.nhs.uk