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Privacy & Legal

Privacy policy, disclaimers, and legal notices

Last updated: July 2026

Overview

The Poet Doctor ("we," "us," or "our") operates poetdoctor.com. This page informs you of our policies regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information, as well as legal notices related to the content published on this site.

Please do not send personal health information through this website, Instagram, or newsletter replies. This site is not monitored for clinical communications or emergencies.

Information We Collect

We collect information you voluntarily provide, such as newsletter subscription details, and limited technical information needed to keep the site reliable, secure, and understandable. We also use cookies and similar technologies for consent preferences and, if you allow them, analytics and advertising measurement.

Data Collected with Subscriptions

When you subscribe to our newsletter, we may collect: your email address, an optional first name, the form placement context (where on the site you signed up), your referral source, and any UTM campaign parameters (source, medium, campaign) present in the page URL.

Consent Logging

To meet our legal obligations, we maintain a server-side audit trail of consent events — subscribe, confirm, and unsubscribe actions. Each event records a hashed IP address and a truncated user-agent string. No raw IP addresses are stored at any point.

Analytics and Advertising Measurement

We use Google Analytics and Cloudflare Web Analytics to understand site usage, and Google Ads to measure whether advertising brings visitors to the site. These tools may process information such as page views, referral source, approximate region, and device/browser information. We use Google's consent tools so Google tags can adjust based on your cookie choices. Before you choose, Google may receive limited consent-related signals without analytics or advertising cookies. If you accept analytics cookies, we send Google your updated analytics consent choice and Google Analytics may then use analytics cookies. If you accept advertising cookies, we send Google your updated advertising consent choice and Google Ads may then use advertising measurement cookies. Cloudflare Web Analytics is configured without cookies; treatment under privacy laws may vary by jurisdiction.

Cookies and Consent Choices

The cookie banner stores your preference in a first-party consent cookie so the site can remember whether you accepted analytics cookies, advertising cookies, both, or kept only necessary cookies. You can change your choice later through the cookie preferences link in the site footer or by clearing your browser cookies.

Reading Recommendations

When you reach the related-poems section on a poem page, the site may record a short local reading history in your browser so it can suggest poems related to what you have been reading. This history is stored only in your browser's local storage and contains only the public poem slugs you viewed and the times you viewed them — never poem text, searches, or any personal or clinical information. It holds at most 20 poems and is automatically removed after 90 days. We never collect, log, infer, or store any patient or clinical details, health conditions, or medical-interest segments through this feature.

Suggestions blend the precomputed similarity of the current poem with up to two recently read poems, entirely on your device using public poem metadata. We do not create a server-side reader profile, and no recommendation data is sent to our database. If you have accepted analytics cookies, we may send individual, consented recommendation events to Google Analytics — an impression when the blended section appears and a click when you follow a suggestion. Each event carries only the public poem slug you are reading from, the public slug of a clicked suggestion and its rank, the recommendation mode, and the counts of seeds and results. These events contain only public poem identifiers, counts, and positions — never poem text, search queries, account or session identifiers, IP-derived identity, or any patient or clinical details, which this feature never collects, infers, or stores. No recommendation event is sent while analytics storage is denied. Clearing your browser storage removes this history.

Newsletter

If you subscribe to our newsletter, we collect your email address and optional first name. We use a double opt-in process: after signing up, you must confirm your subscription via a link sent to your email before receiving any mailings. Transactional and newsletter emails are sent viaResend(opens in new window).

You may unsubscribe at any time using the link included in every email. Upon unsubscribing, we retain a minimal record of your email address and consent history for legal compliance purposes but will not send further communications.

Bot Protection

We use Cloudflare Turnstile to protect our forms from automated abuse. Turnstile may collect interaction data, browser characteristics, and an anonymized token to distinguish humans from bots. No personal data is stored by Turnstile beyond what is needed for the verification challenge. For details, see Cloudflare'sPrivacy Policy(opens in new window)andTurnstile Privacy Addendum(opens in new window).

Data Retention

We retain different categories of data for different periods:

  • Consent audit logs — retained indefinitely for legal compliance.
  • Email subscription records — retained until you request manual deletion.
  • Rate limiting records — automatically pruned on a rolling basis.
  • Cookie consent preferences — stored in a browser cookie until you clear it.
  • Reading history — public poem slugs and view times stored in browser local storage only, capped at 20 poems and pruned after 90 days; cleared when you clear browser storage.

Third-Party Service Providers

We work with a small number of third-party service providers who process data on our behalf:

Your Rights

You have the right to access, correct, or delete any personal information we hold about you. You may also opt out of Google Analytics and Google Ads cookies at any time using the cookie consent banner. Cloudflare Web Analytics cannot be opted out of as it does not track individual users or set cookies.

To exercise your data rights — including requests for access, correction, or deletion — please emailprivacy@poetdoctor.com. We aim to respond within 30 days.

About the Poetry

The poetry on this site arises from many sources, including reading, reflection, personal life, and the broader accumulation of experience that accompanies a life in medicine. Some poems are literary or philosophical. Others engage medical themes. Some do both.

When clinical experience informs a poem, the resulting work is shaped through an artistic process of compression, transformation, alteration, and imaginative reconstruction. Poems on this site are not presented as factual accounts of any actual patient, clinical encounter, or therapeutic relationship.

The author does not publish poetry that identifies, or for which there is a reasonable basis to believe it could identify, any patient or other private individual encountered through clinical work. For artistic and privacy reasons, details may be changed, merged, abstracted, omitted, or otherwise transformed.

Each poem undergoes an editorial process that may span months or years. Publication dates reflect the completion of that process and do not correspond to any particular clinical event, date of care, or identifiable encounter.

Written authorization or release from a patient or individual, determined to be legally sufficient under applicable law and institutional policy, is required prior to publishing any work that includes an identifiable reference to them from a clinical context. When such an authorized work is published, the fact that consent was granted will be explicitly disclosed alongside it.

Medical Disclaimer

Although the author of this site is a licensed physician, the content published here — including poetry, essays, and other creative works — is intended solely for literary and informational purposes. Nothing on this website constitutes medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Use of this website does not create a doctor-patient relationship between you and the author. You should not rely on any content here as a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider with questions about a medical condition or treatment.

If you are experiencing a medical emergency, call 911 (or your local emergency number) immediately.

The author and this website disclaim all liability for any actions taken or not taken based on the content of this site. Links to third-party websites or social media accounts are provided for convenience and do not constitute an endorsement of the information contained therein.

Institutional Disclaimer

The views, thoughts, and artistic expressions on this site are solely those of the author and do not represent the views, policies, or practices of any employer, hospital, clinic, university, or other affiliated institution, past or present.

Policy on Use of AI

The explanatory text on this website was written with AI assistance. All poems on this site are written by hand, without AI.

Copyright

Except as otherwise noted, the original poems and original text on this site are copyrighted works of the author. They may not be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted without prior written permission, except as permitted by applicable law.

Contact

If you have questions about this page, please reach out viaInstagram(opens in new window). For data rights requests (access, correction, or deletion of your personal information), please emailprivacy@poetdoctor.com.