FirstCase Academy Privacy Policy

Effective date: 09/24/2026 · Last updated: 10/08/2026

This policy explains what information FirstCase Academy collects, why, who can see it, and the choices you have. FirstCase Academy ("Academy") is operated by William Guglielmo, doing business as SurgSoul ("SurgSoul", "we", "us"). It covers the Academy website and app at academy.surgsoul.com. Our Terms of Service govern your use of Academy.

The short version

• We collect what we need to run your account and your studying: your sign-in details, the work you do in the app, and anything you choose to write or upload.
• We do not sell your information, and we do not use it for advertising. Academy has no advertising, third-party analytics, or tracking cookies. We count visits to our public pages ourselves, as totals that identify no one.
• Your private notes and anything you mark private are visible only to you — not to your instructors and not to us through the app.
• If you study through a school or training program, your program's educators can see your progress and anything you submit to them. Your program controls the records created in its program.
• Do not enter patient information. Academy is a training tool, not a medical record.
• You can ask us for a copy of your information, to correct it, or to delete it by emailing admin@surgsoul.com.

1. Information we collect

Your account

• Sign-in details: your username, display name, email address, and password. We store your password only as a salted scrypt hash, never the password itself. We record whether you have confirmed your email address.
• Your role and program: whether you are a learner or an educator, which program or personal account you belong to, and any team (cohort) an educator assigns you to.
• Educator invitations: when an educator invites someone to join their program as an educator, we store the address the invitation was sent to, who sent it, and when it was sent, used, or withdrawn, and we email the invitation link to that address. The program's audit trail records that the invitation was sent and who accepted it.
• Sign in with Google or Microsoft (optional): if you choose this, we request only your basic profile and email address. We keep the provider's account identifier, the email address it reports, and when the link was made and last used. We never receive your Google or Microsoft password.

What you do in Academy

• Study activity: the levels you give yourself on each case, drill results, flashcard ratings, your Exam Prep answers and mock exam scores, and when each happened. For your Today card, streak, and weekly goal, we also keep a count for each day of how many flashcards you rated, questions you answered, and drills you finished, along with the weekly goal you choose. Days are counted in your own time zone, which we store as your browser reports it (for example "America/Chicago"). If you set an exam date for a study plan, we keep that date and which exam it is (CST, TS-C, or another). Only you see them; they are not shown to your program's educators, and you can remove them at any time.
• Things you create: surgeon and procedure (preference) cards, private notes, your own practice questions and flashcards, and any photos you attach to a flashcard. In a program, cards belong to the program's shared library; in a personal account, they are yours alone.
• Feedback and requests: the messages you send through "Send feedback" (with your name, username, email, and the screen you were on), and plan or pilot requests (your email, the plan, your school or program name if you give it, your note, and the IP address the request came from).

Clinicals (school and program accounts only)

If your program uses Clinicals, we also collect:

• Attendance: check-in and check-out times, recorded by our server's clock, at the clinical sites your program assigns you, plus any corrections and your instructors' reviews.
• Location at check-in and check-out only. When you check in or out, your browser asks for permission to share your location. We use it once to work out whether you are inside the site's boundary. We do not store your coordinates. We keep the result, the distance from the site, the accuracy your device reported, the time, and any explanation you give when the check does not place you inside the boundary. We never track your location at any other time.
• Your case journal: for each case, the date, surgeon, procedure, specialty, your scrub role, the first-scrub criteria you confirm, and any reflection you write, with every revision and each instructor review, comment, or decision, and optionally the name of the preceptor you worked with.
• Preceptor sign-offs: at the end of a shift you can hand your phone to a preceptor, nurse or surgical technologist, who confirms your cases and shift and signs. We keep the signer's name, credential and role that day, their signature (the strokes they draw, or the name they type), the statement they agreed to, which items they confirmed or declined and any comment, the time from our server, and the result of the same location check used at check-in (again, not the coordinates). Signers do not get an account and are not emailed. Their name and signature are kept as part of your program's clinical record so your instructors can review them. If you are a signer and want to ask about your information, contact the program or us (see below).
• Evaluations: ratings (1 to 4, or "not observed") and comments about your clinical performance, from a preceptor (signed on your phone, kept as for sign-offs above) or from your instructor for a specific procedure (with its date and your role), signed by your instructor and then by you, with any comment you add; your own ratings of a clinical site and its preceptors; and, when your program director verifies your case requirements, their signature and a copy of your case counts at that moment.

Payments

Payments are handled by Stripe. Stripe collects your card and billing details directly; we never see or store your card number. We keep a record of each order: the plan, the amount, its status, Stripe's reference numbers for the payment and for you as a customer, and when your access ends.

Technical information

• A sign-in cookie that keeps you signed in for up to 30 days. It is required for the app to work. We store only a hash of it on our side.
• Your IP address, used to limit repeated failed sign-ins and other abuse (held in memory and cleared when the service restarts), and recorded with plan requests and with administrative actions in your program's audit trail.
• Storage on your device. So Academy works with no signal, your browser keeps: study results waiting to be sent, each labelled with the account that earned it and sent only while that person is signed in; a small profile (your account ID, username, display name, and role — never your progress), which is removed when you sign out; copies of the course material and instrument photos; and preferences such as which updates you have read.
• How you found us. On the first page of a visit, your browser remembers the campaign link or website that brought you, for that browser tab only; it is cleared when you close the tab. If you then create an account or send a plan request, we store that source (for example "instagram", "google", or "direct") with it.
• Visit counts. We count visits to our public pages by day, page, and source. The counts are totals: they contain no cookie, no IP address, and nothing else that identifies you.

We do not use advertising cookies, third-party analytics services, or tracking pixels on Academy.

2. How we use your information

We use your information to:

• run your account, keep you signed in, and let you study across devices and offline;
• show you your progress and suggest what to practice next;
• give your program's educators the features your program pays for (section 3);
• process payments, activate and end paid access, and keep required financial records;
• send service email: password resets, email confirmation, and messages about your account or purchase. We do not send marketing email from Academy without your permission;
• answer feedback and support requests;
• understand which of our pages, posts, and links bring people to Academy, using visit counts and sign-up sources only;
• keep Academy secure, prevent abuse, and investigate problems.

We do not sell your personal information, share it for advertising, or use it to build advertising profiles.

3. Who can see your information

You

You can see all of your own study records, notes, and content.

Your program's educators (school and program accounts)

If you belong to a program, its educators can see:

• your name, username, email address, team, and when you were last active;
• your progress summary — your case self-ratings, drills, flashcards, and Exam Prep results;
• the program's card library, which everyone in the program shares, including the cards you add or edit (each card shows who last updated it);
• any questions or flashcards you mark shared, which they can review, flag, or remove;
• in Clinicals, the attendance records and case journal entries you submit (not your drafts), the preceptor sign-offs and evaluations collected on your phone, the evaluations you sign, and your ratings of clinical sites. The sites and preceptors themselves do not see your ratings in Academy.

Educators cannot see your private notes, your private questions or flashcards, or your unsubmitted clinical drafts. Educators can manage your program account — for example, reset your password, move you to a different team, deactivate your account, or release you to a personal account.

Other learners in your program

Other learners see the program's shared card library and anything you mark as shared, with your name on it. They cannot see your progress, notes, or clinical records.

SurgSoul

Our administration tools show account-level information — organizations, plans, billing status, and who is active — and totals such as how many new accounts came from each source, how many accounts studied this week, and how many have an exam date set, and not your notes, progress, exam history, or cards. Access to the underlying database is limited to SurgSoul's founder and is used only to operate, secure, back up, and support Academy, including troubleshooting you or your program ask us to do. When we change a program's plan or accounts, the change is recorded in that program's own audit trail.

Service providers

We use a small number of companies to run Academy. They process information only to provide their service to us:

When the law requires it, or the business changes

We may disclose information if we believe the law requires it, or to protect the safety, rights, or property of our users, the public, or SurgSoul. If SurgSoul is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, information may transfer as part of that transaction, subject to this policy and to any agreement with your program.

4. Schools and training programs

When a school or training program subscribes, the records created in its program — its roster, learners' activity, shared content, and clinical records — are the program's records. For those records:

• we act on the program's behalf and under its direction, as a service provider to the program;
• we use them only to provide Academy to the program, and we do not sell them, use them for advertising, or disclose them except as the program directs or the law requires;
• the program's educators and administrators decide who in the program is enrolled and what they can see;
• the program can ask us for an export of its records, or for their deletion, at any time.

We intend to support programs in meeting their obligations under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and similar laws. The program remains responsible for its own student-privacy policies and notices.

If you leave a program. When an educator releases you from a program, your account becomes a free personal account. You keep your own study progress, notes, exam history, and private questions and flashcards. The program keeps its shared card library, the shared content you wrote (still credited to you), your clinical records, and its audit trail.

5. How long we keep information

We keep personal information only as long as we need it to provide Academy and for the purposes we collected it for. In setting how long, we consider where the information came from, why we need it, and how sensitive it is. We may keep information longer where the law requires it, or to resolve disputes or collect amounts owed, and we may keep information that has been made anonymous or aggregated so that it no longer identifies you. Specifically:

• Your account and study records: for as long as your account exists. A deactivated account keeps its records.
• Clinical records (attendance, case journals, preceptor sign-offs, evaluations, instructor reviews, and their audit trail): they belong to the program that created them. Surgical technology programs are expected by their accreditors (ARC/STSA) to keep clinical records for at least 5 years, so we keep them for at least 5 years after the program's subscription ends, even after the program's other records are deleted (below), and then delete them. Accounts with clinical records are deactivated rather than deleted, so the program's records stay intact. The program can ask for an export at any time. If a program asks us to delete its clinical records sooner, we give it an export first; the program remains responsible for its own record-keeping obligations.
• Payment records: for as long as tax and accounting rules require. Stripe keeps its own payment records under its own policies.
• Plan and pilot requests: deleted automatically 12 months after your most recent request, with the source recorded for them.
• Educator invitations: deleted automatically 30 days after the invitation link expires. The program's audit trail keeps its record of the invitation for as long as the program's records.
• How you found us: kept with your account and deleted with it.
• Visit counts: kept as daily totals, which identify no one.
• Backups: daily database backups are kept for 14 days, then replaced.
• After a program's subscription ends: its records stay readable to the program and its learners, and paid features pause. We keep the records in that inactive state for 2 years, so the program can return or ask for an export, and then delete them, except its clinical records, which are kept for 5 years as described above. A program can ask us to delete its records sooner by emailing admin@surgsoul.com.

6. Your choices and rights

• See and correct: update your name, email, and password in My Profile, and sign out your other devices there.
• Copy or delete: email admin@surgsoul.com from the address on your account to ask for a copy of your information or to delete your account. We will confirm the request is yours before acting. Records that belong to a program — including clinical records — are handled with that program, and clinical records are kept for the 5-year period in section 5.
• Sign-in providers: you can unlink Google or Microsoft from My Profile.
• Email: service emails are part of having an account. We will not add you to marketing email without your permission.
• Location: your browser asks each time Clinicals needs your location. You can refuse; you will be asked for a short explanation instead, and your instructor reviews that attendance record.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under local law, such as to know, correct, delete, or obtain a copy of your personal information, and not to be discriminated against for using them. We will respond to requests within 30 days.

7. Security

We protect your information with measures including: passwords stored only as salted scrypt hashes; session, password-reset, and invitation tokens stored only as hashes; encrypted connections (HTTPS); strict separation between programs; an audit trail of administrative actions; a strict content-security policy; and daily backups.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we will notify you and, where required, the authorities, as the law requires.

8. Patient and health information

Academy is not designed to receive protected health information. Do not enter patient names, medical record numbers, dates of birth, photos of patients, or anything else that could identify a patient — in notes, cards, flashcards, photos, feedback, or clinical journals. Clinical journal entries are educational records, not medical records. If you notice patient information in Academy, tell us at admin@surgsoul.com and we will remove it.

9. Children

Academy is for adults and for students enrolled in post-secondary or career training programs. It is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from them. You must be at least 16 to create an account, and 18 to purchase a plan. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.

10. Where information is stored

Academy is operated from, and its data is stored in, the United States.

11. Changes to this policy

If we make a material change, we will tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect and update the date above.

12. Contact us

William Guglielmo, doing business as SurgSoul · admin@surgsoul.com

Email reaches a person, not a queue.