These terms and conditions relate to your participation with any paid or free online or in person EMUGs activities such as but not limited to online content, subscriptions or events.

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Our COVID Policy

Postponements and Refunds

In the event that this event needs to be postponed due to COVID-19, your ticket will automatically be carried over until the future date. 

If you are unable to attend the new date for other reasons, our standard refund policy applies - Full refunds available up to 7 days before the event start date.

We will also refund your ticket if the event is not postponed but you are no longer able to attend due to changed COVID restrictions or border rules.

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Keeping You Safe

We make every effort to ensure our events are COVID-safe and adhere to each venue's specific density requirements. 

Please follow local government rules and directives to help keep yourselves and others safe.

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If you have any symptoms of respiratory illness or other symptoms associated with COVID-19 or you have been in contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19, please do not attend this event.

Online and Live Events

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EMUGs events provide high level information that are advisory and supportive only and are not specific to any individual patient needs. Therefore information shared at our events by an EMUGs employee, contractor, volunteer, sponsor, partners or any third party, should not be relied upon for specific patient care. Attendees bear sole responsibility for the use and implementation of any information shared at our events and acknowledge that EMUGs are not responsible for any personal or professional decision or actions taken by the event participant.

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EMUGs events are provided with no special warranty either express or implied. The Organisers, including but not limited to the employees, contractors, volunteer committee members, Directors, advisory  and sponsors, of EMUGs events assume no liability for any loss, theft, damage, or injury to property or persons, including death, whether arising in contract, negligence, equity, or otherwise.

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You assume all risks when participating in EMUGs events. All participants must use care and good judgment and must obey all rules and regulations of EMUGs and the venues at which we host our events. You will comply with all requests made by employees and volunteers of EMUGs and venue staff. You must obey all laws of the region in which the event is held. EMUGs reserves the right to eject any participant who does not comply with the terms of this section. Ejected participants will not be entitled to a refund or any further recourse.

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You will defend, indemnify and hold harmless EMUGs and its employees, contractors, volunteer committee members, Directors, advisory and sponsors for any and all legal actions arising out of participation in EMUGs events. You further agree to pay all legal fees incurred by EMUGs that arise due to this agreement.

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You give EMUGs authorisation to use and post any photographs, videotapes, recordings or any other record of our events, including full names of any participants, before, during or after the event for promotional use, reporting to the media and for publication on our website, blog or social posts. You will not be entitled to any compensation for EMUGs’s use of your name or image.

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Refunds for any reason are at the discretion of EMUGs in accordance with our refunds policy.

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There are certain risks inherent in using ultrasound and other medical equipment. You assume all responsibility for your use of this equipment. You agree that EMUGs and all of its employees, contractors, volunteer committee members, Directors, advisory and sponsors are to the fullest extent permitted by law, excluded from any and all liability for injury or damage caused, connected to or however arising (including any liability for negligence and/or breach of duty) from the participant’s use of ultrasound or other medical equipment whether or not such use is during their participation during an EMUGs event or at any time after. 

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During the course of workshops there may be physical hands-on adjustments made to a participant’s technique; it is the individual’s responsibility to advise a representative of EMUGs if such adjustments are not to occur. 

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Social Chat Forums

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EMUGs community chat groups, such as but not limited to Slack and WhatsAPP consist of like minded POCUS enthusiasts who utilise the forum for POCUS related networking and peer support or for EMUGs committee or project related communications. These forums are commerce free zones which means no one is permitted to promote their products or services (excluding EMUGs events or events promoted by EMUGs on behalf of our partners) without prior permission from EMUGs.

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Group members acknowledge that their participation makes their contact information public to those in the group. Members are fully responsible for their posts to ensure they are relevant, constructive and legal. Members agree to NOT repost any information shared in these forums without expressed permission from the author.  If you have any privacy concerns immediately notify EMUGs immediately or leave the group. Group admin keeps the right to remove any group member at any time without any intimation or reason.

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Digital Content

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By accessing EMUGs content, including website, blog, chat forums and social media sites and registering for and attending EMUGs events, you agree to be bound by the following terms: 

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All content presented, published or posted on this website or any other EMUGs forum or social media platform or at any EMUGs event is subject to copyright and is the intellectual property of Emergency Medicine Ultrasound Groups. You may not reuse, republish or reprint such content without our written consent.

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While EMUGs strives to make the information we disseminate as accurate and timely as possible, we make no claims, promises or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, currency or adequacy of this information and we expressly disclaim liability for errors and omissions and take no responsibility for matters arising from changed circumstances or other information or material which may affect the disseminated information.

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EMUGs makes every effort to monitor the contents of our publications to ensure it is of an appropriate nature in our opinion. If you find inappropriate content on any of our platforms, please notify us immediately. Content that is deemed inappropriate at our sole discretion will be removed. EMUGs shall not be held responsible for inappropriate content, images, comments, opinions or third party links submitted by other users or EMUGs representatives. 

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All information posted is merely for informational purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for professional advice. Should you decide to act upon any information on EMUGs website, blog, group chat groups and social media accounts you do so at your own risk.

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The information contained on this website and our other digital assets is derived from a number of sources such as sponsors, partners, volunteers and other third parties. While the EMUGs has taken all reasonable steps to ensure that all information is from reliable and reputable sources and is accurate, it accepts no liability or responsibility for any acts or omissions, done or omitted in reliance in whole or in part, on the information. EMUGs accept’s no responsibility for the manner in which this information is subsequently used. EMUGs accept no liability or responsibility to any person as a consequence of any reliance upon the information disseminated in any format be that published content or information disseminated verbally, live or recorded at one of our events.

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The views and opinions expressed on our website, blog, group forums and social media accounts are solely those of the original authors and contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of EMUGs or its staff and volunteers and or any other contributors to this site. 

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Reference to any products, services, hypertext link to the third parties or other information by trade name, trademark, supplier or otherwise does not constitute or imply its endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation by us. Nor is endorsement of us implied by such links. They are for convenience only.

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Any information on EMUGs website, blog, forums or social media accounts may include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Furthermore, the information may change from time to time without any notice. EMUGs reserves the right to add, remove or edit content on it’s website, blog and social media accounts at its discretion. 

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While protecting the privacy and personal data of the visitors to our website is of the utmost importance to us, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed as totally secure. Whilst we strive to protect such information, we do not warrant and cannot ensure the security of information which you transmit to us. Accordingly, any information which you transmit to us is transmitted at your own risk. This site has security measures in place to protect the loss and alteration of information under our control.

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We do not collect personal information on this site unless you choose to give it to us and do not share your personal information externally. 

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The user assumes all responsibility and risk for the use of the EMUGs website, blog and social media accounts. Under no circumstances, including negligence, shall anyone involved in creating or maintaining the EMUGs website, blog or social media accounts be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, or loss profits that result from the use or inability to use the website, blog, group forums or social media accounts.

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You agree that, to the maximum extent permitted by law, any and all liability and responsibility of EMUGs to you or any other person under or in connection with these terms of use, or in connection with website, or the material on this website, or your use of or inability to use this website, is excluded regardless of whether such liability arises in contract, tort (including negligence), equity, breach of statutory duty or otherwise.  EMUGs’s liability and responsibility is excluded in respect of any and all loss or damage, whether direct or indirect, including, without limitation, loss of profits, loss of data, loss of business or anticipated savings, general and special damages, and consequential and incidental loss.

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Maintaining Patient Confidentiality when Sharing Cases and Images

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For the purpose of education and peer discussion and support EMUGs encourages its community members to share interesting cases and images via our Whats App chat groups, blog, social media channels and as part of our events such as webinars and workshops. 

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Maintaining  patient confidentiality is crucial and it is the contributors responsibility to ensure they abide by their own hospital /employers policy in this regard. We recommend seeking advice from your hospital executive team or department manager prior to posting any images to these forums.

Nothing in your images or case description should lead to the identification of an individual patient. As such all cases and images should be completely de-identified, so as to leave no way of identifying an individual. The following identifiers must be removed.

• name

• initials

• date of birth

• address, including full or partial postal code

• telephone or fax numbers or contact information

• e-mail addresses

• unique identifying numbers, e.g. UR, MRN, HID

• Place of employment

• medical device identifiers, e.g. serial numbers

• web or internet protocol addresses containing any link to the patient

• biometric data

• facial photograph or comparable image

• audiotapes

• names of relatives

• date of study

• manufacturer logos are sometimes burnt into the images (particularly ultrasound); if possible remove these also

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To help maintain confidentiality we recommend ensuring that the age/sex be changed and that you round off the patient's age to the nearest 5 years (for adults). Please remove embedded text/metadata identifying data from your images and if the file name contains patient identifiers then change it. Most machines and PACS  allow you to export without text overlay. 

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Once an image is published it is difficult to control where it may end up as such we also recommend removing any identifier to you or your place of employment in the image. This would include logos, signatures and names. Try to avoid publishing high profile, rare or temporal cases immediately after you acquire the scan.

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To assist you in this process we recommend using a tool such as Ben Smith’s Ultrasound Clip Deindentifier 

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In the event that you do upload images or text with identifiers it will be deleted as soon as we become aware of it. 

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As we are a community volunteer organisation with multiple contributors on multiple platforms, we are unable to stop identifying information being uploaded without our knowing and so rely on contributors to abide by our terms of use. 

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In the event that you find a case with personal information, please email central@emugs.org and we will remove the content immediately. 

 

Permission & Copyright

Please ensure you have permission to upload the case from your institution in accordance with your institution’s guidelines.

The image must either be free of copyright restrictions or belong to you. 

 

Please contact us if you have any questions.

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