Medical Care For Your child
Americans young and old will sometimes need medical attention when they are ill or hurt, and this medical care may come from a 24 hour emergency care clinic, a hospital, an urgent care center, or a walk in clinic. These health car clinics are ideal for adult patients who need care, but children get their own specialized care, in the field of pediatrics. Patients under 18 years of age will be taken to an urgent care facility for kids if they have suffered minor wounds, and for serious cases, a child may be taken to emergency care. Most cases will only call for an urgent care facility for kids, though, and parents may look up “urgent care facility for kids near me” online whenever their child becomes hurt. At an urgent care facility for kids, pediatricians will know how to diagnose and treat a young patient.
Convenient Care for Children
Regular doctors are trained to mainly take care of adult patients, but pediatricians are board-certified specialist doctors who can handle babies, toddlers, and children under their care. These doctors are experts in the anatomy of children and babies and know what sort of illnesses or conditions these young patients may typically experience. When a child suffers a sports injury or a bad flu, for example, the parents may bring their young son or daughter to an urgent care facility for kids nearby for specialized care. A child may have suffered a sprained wrist or ankle while playing sports, for example, and a pediatrician can help reduce the swelling and apply a wrist or ankle brace for the child. A child may have suffered shallow cuts, such as from stepping on broken glass or mishandling a sharp object, and a pediatric nurse may provide stitches and bandages for the young patient. Children often suffer from colds, the flu, and ear infections, which may be taken care of medicinally.
Emergency Care for Adults
Meanwhile, an emergency care clinic of a hospital’s emergency room (ER) will be needed for patients who are in serious condition. These facilities and their staff of doctors and physicians can get a patient out of harm’s way and help them stabilize and recover with the right tools and medicine. Not all medical cases actually call for a hospital’s ER, but some certainly do, when the patient’s life is in danger.
What calls for emergency care? A patient may need this level of care, for example, if they are suffering serious abdominal or chest pain or difficulty breathing. Such cases may quickly turn life-threatening, if they aren’t already, and they may have life-threatening causes. Major and sudden abdominal pain may be due to a ruptured organ such as the appendix, or the patient may have a cancerous growth. In other cases, a patient who needs emergency care has suffered major trauma, such as broken arms or legs, or a broken rib that has punctured internal organs. Heavy bleeding from stab or bullet wounds certainly call for the ER, as will head or eyeball injuries. A patient who has just suffered a stroke or heart attack will also need this level of care.
Some emergency cases are serious enough for the ER, while most are cases of ordinary and non life-threatening wounds or illness that only call for urgent care. These are two distinct fields of care, but in some medical cases, it may be tough to tell what level of care a patient needs. If this happens, a patient may be taken to a hybrid clinic that offers both emergency and urgent care side by side. This can be very convenient for cases that blur the line, or if nearby urgent or emergency-only facilities are currently closed.
Urgent Care
Urgent care centers are often much faster and more price-friendly to visit than emergency services are, and thousands of such clinics can be found across the United States. Many of these clinics can be found in strip malls or in retailers for convenience, often staffed by nurse practitioners, physicians, and pharmacists. Patients may visit such clinics for a prescription drug refill, or they may visit for bone fractures or to have shallow cuts addressed with stitches and bandages. Upper respiratory issues are another common reason to visit these urgent care clinics.
