Oftentimes, we often experience unexpected injuries or illnesses. A good example is waking up in the middle of the night due to intense abdominal pain. A few other examples include unexplained headaches, infections, rashes, and unexpected falls that result in injuries. When these things happen, two things that often come to mind are emergency care and fast aid urgent care.
Depending on the severity of your condition, visiting urgent care centers or emergency rooms (ERs) certainly matters. But here’s a quick question—when is the right time to visit ERs and urgent care centers? As you read on, you’ll discover the differences between fast-paced urgent care and emergency care and how to choose the right one for your condition.
Understanding the differences between fast-paced health urgent care and emergency care
As the name suggests, both emergency care and urgent care mean getting immediate treatment solutions. Since both involve getting medical care quickly, people often use both terms interchangeably. Well, this is never supposed to be so because emergency care and fast aid urgent care are two different things.
Emergency rooms, which you can find in most Canadian hospitals, provide medical care at any time. They offer both day and night services to patients facing emergency cases. The services are rendered based on the severity of the patient’s medical conditions. Another good thing about ERs is they’re staffed and fully equipped to handle life-threatening conditions and severe health issues.
On the other hand, urgent care is just walk-in clinics that bridge the gap between traditional hospitals and emergency rooms. In traditional hospitals, your regular doctors aren’t always available—they require you to book appointments every time. But what happens if you experience unexpected medical issues that need you to visit a care center immediately? In this case, you can rely on hospital visitation. Here’s where the need to visit an urgent care clinic comes into play. As long as your condition isn’t life-threatening, these clinics will ensure you get proper care that aligns with your needs.
Bottom line: the major difference between emergency care and urgent care is that the former majorly focuses on severe or life-threatening cases. As for urgent care, you can only visit when your condition is not life-threatening but requires immediate intervention.
When to visit an emergency room?
The answer to this question, as earlier mentioned, depends on the severity of your medical conditions. That said, below are a few warning signs to know you need emergency care:
- Difficulty breathing
- Slurred speech
- Fainting
- Head injury
- Broken bones
- Concussion
- Seizures
- Fever plus rash
- Bleeding from viginal during pregnancy
- Chronic flu symptoms
All these aforementioned cases can get complicated, resulting in deaths if care isn’t taken quickly. Since they’re life-threatening, visiting an ER is crucial to address them.
When to visit a fast aid urgent care center?
Urgent Care centers in Canada only focus on treating non-life-threatening health conditions that require immediate care. These health conditions are never considered emergencies because they are not life-threatening.
The best urgent care clinics, such as Urgent Care Pros, are equipped with various diagnostic systems, as well as X-rays and labs. This explains why these clinics can handle a wide range of non-life-threatening health conditions. The more people get familiar with these clinics and visit them, the lesser the traffic that goes into ERs—leaving only people who truly need emergency care to visit them.
That said, a visit to Urgent Care Pros is advised if you experience any of these conditions:
- Fever (but no rash)
- Nausea and vomiting
- Abdominal pain
- Sprains, strains, and dislocation
- Minor injuries
- Wheezing
- Dehydration
Experts at Urgent Care Pros can help address any of these issues quickly. You can visit the official website to better understand other medical conditions that you can treat in this clinic.