When to Visit an Urgent Care Center

Every day, many Americans young and old will get hurt or ill, and when that happens, they should be taken to urgent care clinics or emergency rooms as needed. A nearby party may look up “urgent care near me” if the victim has a minor medical problem, and if the victim’s life is in danger, the helper can look up “emergency care centers nearby”. When looking up such clinics, they can specify their ZIP code or city name to keep the results local, and specify that they need a 24 hour clinic if the victim needs help at an odd time of day. It should also be noted that most urgent and emergency care centers are meant for adult patients, and pediatric urgent care centers are the right choice for a younger patients. Parents can look up and visit pediatric urgent care centers if their baby or child is hurt or ill, and at those pediatric urgent care centers, pediatricians will know exactly how to care for a young patient.

Pediatric Urgent Care Centers

If a baby, toddler, or child becomes ill or hurt, but their medical case is not serious enough to require the ER, then the parents can find pediatric urgent care centers nearby and take their children there. Some of these urgent care centers might be open 24 hours a day, in fact. At such clinics, pediatricians are specialized doctors who understand the anatomy and health needs of babies and children, and this allows them to treat these young patients. Those doctors may diagnose an illness such as a cold, flu, ear infection, and more. Those doctors, and nurses on staff, can also help stitch up and bandage shallow cuts, treat sunburn or skin rashes, deal with an allergy, and more. Overall, these clinics are the right choice for any patient under 18 years old. The parents may also see a doctor to get a drug prescription for their child, such as for an allergy.

Adult Urgent Care Centers

Meanwhile, regular urgent care centers and walk in clinics can treat adult patients for a variety of health problems, and fortunately, this is a large and still-growing industry in the United States. Ever since the year 2000, over 2,500 of these urgent care clinics have been built across the United States, and they are typically small, independent medical sites staffed with nurse practitioners and physicians. Sometimes, these clinics might also form small local networks with one another. If such a clinic is running smoothly, it may see three patients per hour or so, and many of them accept various healthcare insurance policies. Urgent and walk in clinics may be built into strip malls for convenience, though some can also be found in retailers (retail clinics) and some are even built into hospitals.

At an urgent care center, a patient may visit the pharmacy to pick up prescription drug refills (common at retail clinics), and they can also get medicinal relief from the common cold and flu during influenza season. The nurses on staff can provide stitches and bandages for shallow cuts and wounds, and they can also offer lotion and ointment for rashes and sunburn. Four in five urgent care centers provide treatment for bone fractures, and nearly all of them can also provide care for wrist and ankle sprains.

Emergency Care

Finally, there are emergency clinics and a hospital emergency rooms, which are necessary for medical cases too serious for a walk in clinic. A patient’s very life might be in danger, in fact. A patient may have suffered a broken arm or leg, or sustained an injury to the head or one or both eyes. Bullet wounds and stab wounds will also require a visit to emergency services, and those injuries might be bleeding heavily. Difficulty breathing and major chest pain also merit emergency treatment, since those conditions could turn life threatening at any moment, if they are not already. As for abdominal pain, most cases of abdominal pain are in fact harmless, but if that pain is sudden, severe, and/or long lasting, then a trip to the ER is encouraged, since the underlying cause could be serious. The patient might have internal bleeding or even cancer in some cases.