Here in the United States, urgent care locations have become a viable form of medical care. After all, these urgent care centers can treat a wide array of issues, providing a vaster selection of medical treatments than many people realize. As a matter of fact, the typical urgent care centers, serving upwards of three million people throughout the course of a typical week, are now actually able to provide a viable alternative to hospital care.
For instance, the average medical care clinic is likely to see a great deal of cold cases throughout the course of a year, particularly during the height of flu and cold season. Over the course of that year long period, as a matter of fact, up to one billion people will come down with at least one cold, if not even more than that. For healthy adults, getting anywhere from three to four colds in this span of time is very much the norm, and healthy kids can get up to ten separate colds without cause for concern. Fortunately, the common cold is easy to recover from for the vast majority of people, lasting, on average, for a mere ten days and very rarely past two weeks. In some cases, cold symptoms will even begin to clear up after a mere 24 hours. However, going into an urgent care clinic to be assessed when you have a particularly bad cold can be a good thing, as it can help to rule out the potential for the flu.
And the flu is a much more serious thing – and one that is prevalent throughout the United States and many other parts of the world during the winter months. The flu, even during the most mild of years, will impact up to a full 5% of the American population. And in years when the flu is much more widespread, up to a full one fifth of people will be affected by it. Unfortunately, most people do not take the flu seriously enough, as many an urgent care doctor or really any medical professional is likely to be able to attest to. For many people, the flu is nothing more than a slightly more severe common cold, but this is not the case at all. Unfortunately, the flu can kill – and it can kill not just those who are at risk for it, but healthy adults as well.
Fortunately, there are a number of steps that can be obtained through urgent care treatment. First of all, going to a walk in urgent care center for a flu shot will be very important indeed. The flu shot, while never 100%, will provide some level of protection against the flu – and some level of protection is most certainly better than none at all. And even if you do still end up getting the flu later on in the season, the severity of your flu will most certainly be much less pronounced. For instance, the flu shot can help to mitigate the chances that you’ll develop something like pneumonia or even sepsis as a result of getting the flu. Therefore, getting the flu shot is worth it whether or not you end of getting the flu.
You can also go to your local walk in clinic or urgent care center for an anti viral treatment as well. Such flu treatment won’t be able to cure your flu, but it will help to reduce the duration during which you are sick as well as reduce the amount of symptoms that you ultimately have. Getting this flu treatment, however, is imperative to do as soon as you begin to develop symptoms, as it is unfortunately only going to be fully effective early on in your illness. Ultimately, you will want to give yourself ample time for recovery – and ample time to rest and replenish your body. For viral illnesses like the flu, any urgent care doctor or other such medical professional will recommend exactly this.
At the end of the day, there is just no doubting the fact that walk in urgent care centers are growing more and more prominent all throughout the country.