Privacy policy.

Who we are.

The Rhythm Vet is the education platform of Dr. Hayley McDonald, a board-certified veterinary cardiologist, key opinion leader, and speaker who teaches practical cardiology to vets and techs. This policy covers the website at therhythmvet.com, the newsletter, and the ways you can contact us through them. Dr. Hayley also teaches on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn at @therhythmvet, and the section on comments and featured content explains how this policy meets those platforms.

Information you give us.

You can read the entire site without telling us anything. We only hold personal information you choose to share, and it arrives in a few ways.

• The contact form on the About page collects your name, your email address, and your message, so we can reply.
• The media inquiry form on the Media page collects the same three things, which the media team uses to send the media kit and follow up on your inquiry.
• The newsletter signup collects your email address.
• Anything you send by email or by direct message on a social platform.

Information collected automatically.

This site is a set of static pages served by our hosting provider, Vercel. Like any web host, Vercel keeps standard server logs, which include things like your IP address, browser type, the pages requested, and timestamps. Those logs exist to run and secure the site, not to profile you. The site itself does not set advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

Case submissions from vets and techs.

Some of Dr. Hayley's teaching starts with real cases sent in by colleagues. When you send a case through the contact form, by email, or by direct message, you are offering it for teaching. Dr. Hayley may review it, edit it for clarity and length, and publish it as a case breakdown on this site, in the newsletter, or on her social channels. Sending a case does not create a veterinarian-client relationship, is not a consult, and is not a promise the case will be used.

Before you send a case, three rules protect everyone involved.

• Leave the owner out. Do not include a client's name, contact details, or anything else that identifies them. We do not want that information, and if it arrives we delete or redact it.
• Send only the clinical detail the case needs. Signalment, history, ECGs, imaging, and outcomes teach the case. Microchip numbers, patient IDs, and practice records do not.
• Share only what you are permitted to share. You are responsible for meeting your own professional and legal confidentiality obligations to your clients and your practice before submitting.

On our side, we remove or generalize identifying details before anything is published, and we do not credit you by name or by practice unless you have told us you want the credit. You can withdraw a submission at any time before it is published, and after publication you can ask us to anonymize it further or take it down.

Comments, testimonials, and featured content.

Dr. Hayley teaches in public. Her content reaches tens of thousands of vets, techs, specialists, and others across Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn, and has been viewed millions of times. What happens on those platforms is governed by each platform's own privacy policy and your own account settings, not by this one. What we receive from the platforms is aggregate, the play counts, likes, and follower statistics they show every creator. We do not receive your private account information.

Sometimes a public comment is worth keeping. We may feature public comments and questions on this site or in Dr. Hayley's content, shown with the public username they were posted under. If your comment is featured and you would rather it were not, contact us and we will anonymize or remove it promptly.

Direct messages are different. A DM is private, and we do not publish one, or any part of one, without asking you first.

The newsletter.

The newsletter delivers Dr. Hayley's case breakdowns and teaching to your inbox. We use your email address for that and nothing else. It is stored with the email service provider that sends the newsletter on our behalf, every issue includes an unsubscribe link that works immediately, and we never sell, rent, or swap the list.

How we use information.

Everything above comes down to five uses. We use your information to reply to you, to send you what you asked for, such as the newsletter or the media kit, to build teaching content from cases and comments as described above, to run and secure the site, and to meet legal obligations if they arise. We do not use it for advertising, we do not build profiles of you, and we do not sell it.

Who we share it with.

We share personal information only with the service providers that make the site work, our hosting provider (Vercel), our domain registrar, and our email service provider, each of which processes it on our behalf and only for that purpose. Beyond that, we would disclose information only if required by law or to protect someone's rights or safety, and, if The Rhythm Vet were ever restructured or transferred, information could move with it, with notice to you. Brand partners and sponsors never receive your personal information.

Cookies and embedded content.

The site does not use advertising cookies or cross-site tracking. If a page embeds third-party content, such as an Instagram post or a live feed, that provider may set its own cookies and collect data under its own policy, and we will name any such provider in this policy when one is in use.

Your rights.

Wherever you live, you can ask us to tell you what personal information we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or stop using it, and you can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time. To make a request, use the contact form on the About page and tell us what you would like done. We may ask you to confirm you are who you say you are, and we will respond within the time your local law requires, or within 30 days if no law sets one.

If you are in the EEA, the UK, or Switzerland.

The General Data Protection Regulation, and its UK and Swiss equivalents, apply to you. Our legal bases for processing are consent, for the newsletter and for featuring your case or comment with credit, legitimate interests, for responding to messages, securing the site, and creating educational content from material shared publicly or submitted for that purpose, and legal obligation, where the law requires. You have the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, and objection, the right to withdraw consent at any time, and the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.

If you are in California.

The California Consumer Privacy Act gives you the right to know what personal information we collect, to access it, to correct it, to delete it, and to not be discriminated against for exercising those rights. We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of. To exercise any California right, use the contact form on the About page, and we will respond within 45 days.

Where your information is processed.

The site and its service providers operate from the United States. Because Dr. Hayley's audience is international, information you submit from outside the United States is transferred to and processed in the United States, where data protection laws may differ from your country's. Where the law requires safeguards for that transfer, such as Standard Contractual Clauses for information from the EEA or the UK, we rely on the safeguards our service providers have in place.

How long we keep information.

Messages and inquiries are kept as long as needed to handle them and for a reasonable period afterward. Newsletter addresses are kept until you unsubscribe. Case submissions that become published teaching remain part of the published record in their de-identified form, and unpublished submissions are deleted once it is clear they will not be used. When you ask us to delete something, we do, unless the law requires us to keep it.

Security.

We keep the footprint small on purpose. The site collects little, stores nothing itself, and relies on established providers with industry-standard security. Traffic to the site and email in transit are encrypted. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot promise absolute security, but collecting less is the strongest protection there is.

Children.

This site is written for veterinary professionals and students. It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has sent us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

Links to other sites.

The site links out to social platforms, journals, and publications. Once you leave therhythmvet.com, the privacy policy of the site you land on applies, and we encourage you to read it.

Changes to this policy.

When this policy changes, we will update the effective date at the top of this page, and if a change is material we will flag it on the site or in the newsletter. Continuing to use the site after a change takes effect means the updated policy applies.

Contact.

Questions about this policy, requests about your information, and anything that reads as less than clear can go through the contact form on the About page. We will get back to you as quickly as we can, and within any timeframe the law requires.