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Privacy policy

At the Obstetric Anaesthetists' Association (OAA) we respect the privacy of visitors to our LabourPains website. We take our duty to process your personal data very seriously. This policy explains how we collect, manage, use and protect your personal information when you visit our website.
 
The processing of personal data shall always be in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), The Data Protection Act 2018, and Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations (PECR).
Specific data protection declarations will be provided separately when booking onto the OAA's events, this will allow for the nuances of such event data processing to be communicated to you in a transparent manner.

We may change this document from time to time to reflect the latest view of what we do with your information. Please check back frequently; you will be able to see if changes have been made by the date it was last updated.

If you have any questions about our privacy policy, please contact us at secretariat@oaa-anaes.ac.uk

The Obstetric Anaesthetists’ Association is a membership society for anaesthetists and other health professionals involved in caring for pregnant women in the UK and overseas. Our purpose is to improve the quality and safety of maternity care by promoting education, research and information. LabourPains.org is the public information website of the Obstetric Anaesthetists' Association and is on open access website.

In this policy references to the OAA, or to 'we' or 'us' are to the Obstetric Anaesthetists' Association (OAA), which is registered as a charity in England and Wales no. 1111382 and as a company limited by guarantee no. 5540014 (England) at 21 Portland Place, London W1B 1PY.

We are registered as a data controller under registration number: ZA094860 Obstetric Anaesthetists' Association

We have several lawful reasons that mean we can use (or 'process') your personal information. One lawful reason is something called your 'legitimate interests'. Broadly speaking legitimate interests means we can process your personal information if:

  • We have a genuine and legitimate reason and
  • We are not harming any of your rights and interests.

What information do we collect when you use the LabourPains website and how do we use it?

When you use the LabourPains website, we use various technologies to collect information automatically – such as your IP address. This is commonplace across all internet services to enable the investigation of issues such as service availability and the identification of malicious use. This information is then kept in our internet access logs.

If you contact the OAA with an enquiry about the LabourPains website, such as a question about our content, you may be contacted to provide feedback on how we managed your enquiry. You will be asked for your consent when you submit your data to us.

We will hold the information you provide us for as long as necessary to support the service we are providing you, for example so we can continue to provide assistance or resolve an ongoing issue.

If no communication has been made in over 12 months and the information is not required to resolve an ongoing issue, then all communication and any personal information will be deleted. Non-personal information, such as how long your enquiry was open for or the part of the website you were using, will remain. This is to allow for reporting over a period greater than 12 months.

Information is kept for 12 months to allow for trend analysis, identifying reoccurring issues and understanding common issues.

Exceptions include those currently following the complaints process, or when consent to keep information for longer has been obtained. Additionally, if we have determined that the information supplied contains personal information that we do not need to hold to provide assistance, we will endeavour to remove this information sooner.

We analyse information to see what is most effective about our website and associated services to help us identify ways to improve it and to make it more effective. We may also use information for other purposes, which we would describe to you at the point when we collect the information.

By doing this, though, we will also carefully consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights.

If you choose to interact with us on social media, we may receive some personally identifiable data about you, which is supplied by the channel you are using (for example, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube). This may include:

  • name
  • social media handles (such as Twitter account name)
  • location history (where you are contacting us from)
  • images (such as your profile picture).

We will process and store your data in accordance with the terms and conditions and privacy policy of the platform in question. You should be aware that your use of these platforms is governed by the terms and conditions agreed between you and the platform, rather than the LabourPains website.

You should be aware that social networks may control some of the data associated with interactions between you (the user) and us (LabourPains website) on their platforms. For example, we will be able to delete our own records of a private message conversation if you request us to do so, but social networks may store a copy of this conversation that we are unable to access.

We would recommend using the privacy tools built in to the social networks in question to ensure you are able to exercise your rights appropriately.

We only disclose information to third parties or individuals when obliged to by law, for purposes of national security, taxation, criminal investigations, professional regulatory body investigations and the following:

  • If we receive a complaint about any content you have posted or transmitted to or from one of our sites, to enforce or apply our terms and conditions or if we believe that we need to do so to protect and defend the rights, property or personal safety of the OAA, our websites or our visitors or for other lawful purposes.
  • We may disclose aggregate statistics about our site visitors, members, customers and sales to describe our services and operations to prospective partners and other reputable third parties and for other lawful purposes, but these statistics won't include any personally identifying information.

The Obstetric Anaesthetists' Association will share your personal data with third parties only for the purposes of essential sub-contracted processing. We will seek assurances that these contractors/processors have in place appropriate technical and organisational measures to safeguard the security of your data.

  • We strive to capture the minimal amount of personal data, and only share with other organisations where the law permits us to do so or where we require and have gained your consent.
  • We only share information with our authorised Data Processors for the sole purpose of processing the data in connection with the service we have procured from them. These processors must act at all times on our instructions as the Data Controller under the Data Protection legislation.
  • We do not sell individuals' information.

Our website uses cookies, as almost all websites do, to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile phone when you browse websites.

Our cookies help us:

  • Make our website work as you'd expect
  • Remember your settings during and between visits Improve the speed/security of the site Continuously improve our website for you
  • Granting us permission to use cookies

We use cookies to compile visitor statistics such as how many people have visited our website, what type of technology they are using, how long they spend on the site, what page they look at, etc. This helps us to continuously improve our website. These analytics programs also tell us, on an anonymous basis, how people reached this site (e.g. from a search engine) and whether they have been here before, helping us to develop our services for you. Our site uses Google Analytics.

You can change your preferences by clicking this link: Cookie Preferences

At any point while we are in possession of or processing your personal data, you, the data subject has the following rights:

  • Right of access – you have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you free of charge.
  • Right of rectification – you have the right to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete.
  • Right to be forgotten – in certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records.
  • Right to restriction of processing – where certain conditions apply to have a right to restrict the processing.
  • Right of portability – you have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation
  • Right to object – you have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing.
  • Right to object to automated processing, including profiling – you also have the right to be subject to the legal effects of automated processing or profiling.

On occasion our website will contain links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to our public information website, LabourPains.org. When you link to other websites you should read their own privacy policies.

We keep our privacy policy under regular review and we will place any updates on this web page. This privacy policy was last updated on 17 April 2023.

If you wish to make a complaint regarding how your personal data is being processed by the OAA, please contact our data protection representative. If you are unhappy with how your complaint has been handled, you have the right to lodge a complaint directly with the ICO.

Data Protection Representative

OAA Secretariat, 21 Portland Place London W1B 1PY

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