Discussion Forums

While our forums are moderated and medically overseen, we are not an emergency service. If you have an urgent problem, you should contact your health care provider or visit your medical emergency services. To obtain medical advice at any time in the United Kingdom, you can telephone the NHS 111 Service on 111 and can find information on the NHS website here.

Detailed general information can be found on our website. Please remember that online medical information is no substitute for expert medical care from your own healthcare team.

We welcome you and aim to make using these message boards a useful and
supportive experience for all. You are welcome to express your opinions and disagree with others but please do so with mutual respect and comply with our guidelines below when posting. Please note that the views expressed on our message boards are not necessarily those of The Ectopic Pregnancy Trust.

This is a Civilised Place for Public Discussion

Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.

These are not hard and fast rules. They are guidelines to aid the human judgment of our community and keep this a kind, friendly place for civilized public discourse.

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always adding something positive to the discussion, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spend time browsing the topics before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

The topics discussed matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

Anyone who has had an ectopic pregnancy, their partners, family, and friends may use the forums to write about their experiences of ectopic pregnancy and gain information and the support of others who may have been through similar situations. Medical professionals or those wishing to make contact with others who have the experience of ectopic pregnancy for research purposes, please email ept@ectopic.org.uk instead of using the boards. If you are a journalist, please see our Press section. We have an extensive list of volunteers who may be able to help you.

The conversations we have set the tone for every new arrival. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not.

Discourse provides tools such as bookmarks, flags, replies, edits, watching, and muting. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too.

Let’s leave our community better than we found it.

Moderators have special authority; they oversee this forum. But you have a responsibility to everyone who uses the boards too. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police. Please help everyone by keeping the forum a safe space

When you see bad behaviour, don’t reply. Replying encourages bad behaviour by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

To maintain a friendly, supportive and safe atmosphere, and to ensure that medical information is accurate and safe, The Ectopic Pregnancy Trust retrospectively and manually moderates messages submitted. Messages that violate our guidelines will be moderated and posts may be locked or deleted.

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree
You may wish to respond by disagreeing. That’s fine. But remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:

• Name-calling
• Ad hominem attacks
• Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content
• Knee-jerk contradiction

Instead, provide thoughtful insights that improve the conversation.

The following types of post may undergo moderation:

• Threatening, defamatory or discriminatory posts – you are welcome to discuss, agree and disagree but please respect other users and do not attack those whose views you disagree with. Personalisation of posts which may be considered as threatening, defamatory or discriminatory will always be moderated. It’s a really good idea to think about how a message might be received before you post it

• Obscenity – the use of uncensored swear words, obscene, offensive, discriminatory or indecent language and images is not permitted and will not be tolerated

• Political and religious discussion – please do not use these message boards as a forum for discussions on political or religious matters unrelated to ectopic pregnancy

• Spam – spamming of The Ectopic Pregnancy Trust boards is not permitted and all spam, including posts written for financial gain or to promote events or services, will be removed. People who use the forums for this will be permanently blocked from using the message boards

• Personal information – for your own safety, please do not post any personal information in the body of the text on any post you might leave on the message boards. This includes your email, home address, telephone or mobile number. The EPT does not exchange email addresses on your behalf

• Links to web pages – Please do not post links or specifically direct people in any other way to external websites. This includes naming websites and pages, even if the link is not provided in your post. As a health information provider, we link only to approved information. If you would like to make reference to another site, please contact The EPT prior to posting. The EPT is not under any obligation to consent

• Advertising – please do not mention, endorse or discuss brand names on the message boards. If you would like to make reference to a particular product, please contact us prior to posting, to ensure that our guidance on advertising is not breached. The EPT is not under any obligation to consent

• Fundraising – please do not advertise your fundraising event. We warmly welcome people approaching us to raise funds for The Ectopic Pregnancy Trust. We do not, however, permit individuals to promote their fundraising activities on the message boards. If this were to be permitted then, due to frequency of events taking place throughout the year, the forums could become fundraising tools rather than a supportive environment for those bereaved. Instead, we provide fundraisers with a detailed fundraising pack when they contact us to register their event. You can visit our fundraising page and register

• Discussions about clinics, hospitals, doctors and healthcare providers – The Ectopic Pregnancy Trust does not endorse any particular clinics, hospitals, doctors or healthcare providers. Any mention of, or discussion about, individuals or establishments should not be viewed as a recommendation. Please do not mention the names of medical practitioners or other individuals in discussions, other than in a positive light, as this could jeopardise the future of the message boards

• Legal and confidentiality issues – please do not post illegal, unlawful, confidential or trade information, injunctions or content relating to pending or ongoing legal proceedings. Please do not post admissions to, or encourage others to participate in, criminal activities

• Copyright – if posting material written by other people on the forum (particularly “poems, prose, and words of remembrance” section), please ensure that you write the name of the author in the text of your message. If you do not know the author, please write “author unknown”

• Alternative therapies – while we understand that many people are interested in the use of alternative and complementary therapies, we do not endorse these on our site. We therefore remind you that, should you wish to make use of these therapies, you exercise caution and also refrain from recommending them to other users of The EPT forums. Many complementary medicines are quite powerful and can have harmful side effects if misused. They may also interact with medicines that someone is taking

• Post Only Your Own Stuff – You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:

• Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
• Keep it clean. Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
• Respect each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
• Respect our forum. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize the forum.

These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you’re unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of a major news site.

This is a public forum, and search engines index these discussions. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends.

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:

• Don’t start a topic in the wrong category; please read the category definitions.
• Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
• Don’t post no-content replies.
• Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
• Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.

Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a Linked Topic.

In the bottom right hand corner of each post is a flag symbol. To report any abusive post, please click on this and the moderators will be made aware of the post and will moderate the message accordingly.

Please contact us if you have any questions about this message board or to report abuse.  There is a combination of in-house and external moderation.