Sometimes, a nearby victim may need urgent care or emergency care, and a person must be ready to look up and find urgent care centers or emergency rooms nearby for help. If local urgent care centers are not known by heart, a quick Internet search on a PC or smartphone may show some local results to try out. A person may enter “where is an urgent care near me?” to find these clinics, and a search like “where is an urgent care near me?” can be refined for particular needs, such as time of day. Entering “where is an urgent care near me 24 hrs” is a good idea when looking for urgent care at an odd time of day. Or, a client may enter “where is an urgent care near me pediatrics” if the patient is under 17 years old. Minor and non life-threatening wounds and illnesses call for urgent care like this, while life-threatening injuries or conditions call for the ER in particular. It’s important to know which is which.
Finding Emergency Care
While “urgent” and “emergency” may sound somewhat similar in meaning, urgent and emergency care are different. Emergency care is the highest level of care, reserved for major medical cases that urgent care centers can’t easily handle. This includes a hospital’s ER or an emergency clinic, and there, a patient may be stabilized and set on the road to recovery. A patient may need this level of care, for example, if they have suffered a broken arm or leg, or if they sustained a head or eye injury. Bullet or stab wounds also call for emergency care, as such trauma often involves damaged organs or heavy bleeding, or both. Meanwhile, serious chest pain or difficulty breathing also call for emergency care, as they can quickly turn life-threatening (if they aren’t already). And what about abdominal pain? Often, abdominal pain is relatively harmless, caused by gas or indigestion. The exception is when such pain is sudden, strong, and/or persistent, so going to emergency care is the safest bet.
A hospital’s ER can save a life with expert doctors and physicians on hand, but these emergency rooms should not be treated as a catch-all for medical problems. They are best reserved for patients with dire needs, and patients with more minor problems are best off visiting urgent care or walk in clinics. Often, those clinics are cheaper and faster to visit than the ER, anyway. It is called “convenient care” for a good reason, after all. What does it entail?
What Urgent Care Can Do
A patient needs urgent care if their medical case requires attention, but the problem is not life-threatening. Fortunately, urgent care and walk in clinics can be found all across the United States in great numbers, and all major cities and most towns have at least a few of them that patients can visit. Many of these clinics are small and independent facilities, though some form local networks with each other. Such a clinic may be staffed with nurse practitioners and physicians who can handle a wide variety of minor health ailments among patients, and most such clinics also have trained pharmacists on hand, too. it is common for urgent care clinics to have a pharmacy built into them, where guests may pick up prescription drug refills.
Many of these clinics are built into strip malls for ease of access, though some can b found in retailers (known as retail clinics), and others are built into hospitals (which offer separate care from the hospital itself). All of these clinics, though, provide similar levels of care for non emergency medical cases among patients.
Patients at an urgent care center may have shallow cuts taken care of with stitches or bandages that the nurses on staff may provide, and the staff may also provide ointment and lotion for skin rashes or bad sunburns. Around 80% of these clinics can also provide treatment for bone fractures, and most of them can also provide ice packs and braces for sprained ankles or wrists. Often, during influenza season, patients may visit to get medicinal relief from the cold or flu, and patients may also have upper respiratory issues taken care of during their visit.