Every day, millions of Americans young and old will suffer injuries or illness, and need professional medical care. Children, toddlers, and babies in particular will need pediatric care, and for minor cases, a pediatric urgent care center is the best option. Meanwhile, a serious injury or a critical medical issue calls for emergency care at a hospital, in the pediatric ward. Adult patients can visit any number of the nation’s urgent care centers or emergency care clinics for aid. When a patient needs help, a nearby party can look up something such as “urgent care centers near me,” or for a child, “after hours pediatrics” or “childrens walk in clinic near me.” Not all such clinics are open all day, though, so if the patient needs help at an odd time of day, it is best to look for 24-hour clinics, such as “after hours pediatrics” for help.
After Hours Pediatrics Done Right
Most urgent care clinics and emergency care providers expect adult patients, so children and babies who need care should be taken to a pediatrician for help, even at night (when after hours pediatrics can help). Minor medical cases call for urgent care, while critical cases require emergency care options, and the same is true of adult patients. A pediatrician is an expert on children’s anatomy and common health issues, and these doctors can examine a patient and ask the parents or guardian questions to determine what the problem may be.
How might this work? A child or even a baby may have suffered a physical wound, such as an animal bite or a shallow cut or scrape, or sprains or bone fractures. The doctors and nurses on staff can provide braces, bandages, splints, stitches, and more for these wounds. Meanwhile, a young patient may have suffered from vomiting, a bad fever, asthma, allergies, dehydration, a sore throat, an ear infection, or some other mild medical case, and the doctor can diagnose the cause and prescribe medicine and/or home treatment. These doctors are readily available during the day, and if a young patient needs help at night, a after hours pediatrics center is the right call.
Adult Urgent Care
In general, adult convenient care is a similar concept to children’s urgent care: visiting a walk in clinic for aid with non-emergency medical problems. Fortunately, this young business has grown rapidly, and a few thousand urgent care centers have been built ever since the year 2000. These are small, independent clinics staffed with nurse practitioners and physicians who can treat minor medical issues, and if a clinic is running smoothly, it may see three patients per hour. A patient can expect quick, low-cost treatment, hence the common term “convenient care.” Many of these clinics are found in strip malls, but others can also be found in retailers (these are retail clinics) or even inside hospitals.
a patient can visit a clinic (often retail clinics in particular) for prescription drug refills at the pharmacy, and during influenza season, patients often visit to get medicinal relief from the common cold and flu, too. Four in five urgent care centers can provide treatment for bone fractures, and nearly all of them can treat wrist and ankle sprains as well. Shallow cuts, sunburns, skin rashes, a fever, and upper respiratory issues are other common reasons why Americans visit these walk in clinics.
Emergency Care Done Right
A serious or even life-threatening medical case requires full-blown emergency care, such as an emergency care clinic or a hospital’s ER, where doctors and surgeons can stabilize a patient and save their life. A patient may need this level of care for a broken arm or leg, for example, or if they sustained a head wound eye damage to one or both eyes. Stab wounds and bullet wounds also call for emergency aid, and such injuries may bleed heavily. Chest pain and difficulty breathing also merit a visit to emergency centers, since such conditions can turn life-threatening at any moment. The same is true of a recent heart attack. And what about abdominal pain? Most cases are actually harmless, but if that pain is sudden, severe, and/or long lasting, it is time for emergency aid, since the underlying cause might be quite serious.
