The American medical industry is a large one, and medical care can take many different forms for ill or injured people in need. In particular, urgent care clinics or walk in clinics are very convenient and helpful for someone who needs non-emergency care, and pain clinics are helpful for dealing with back pain, arthritis, and more. It may be noted that a hospital’s emergency room, or ER, is not a catch-all service for medical care, as only patients with life-threatening conditions or injuries should be taken to the ER. Instead, someone who has suffered a cut or the flu, or someone with chronic back pain, may visit an urgent care center or local pain clinics, respectively. The staff at sites like these will know just what to do.
Visit an Urgent Care Center
Urgent car is both more cost-friendly and quicker to get than emergency care, and any patient with non life-threatening medical problems is urged to find one of these clinics and visit. Over 2,000 of them can be found across the United States, withe every city and many towns having at least a few of them for patients to visit. Someone who needs urgent care may conduct an online search, or have someone nearby perform that search, and a search query may be like “urgent care near me San Diego CA” or “24 hour urgent care in Manhattan.” Not all urgent care clinic are open 24 hours a day, but some are, and that’s important for patients who need care at an odd time of day, when other clinics might be closed. Often, a person will visit these clinics with personal transport, and they might even be able to take themselves there.
Urgent medical care can handle many different minor medical cases. The staff at such a clinic will be physicians, nurse practitioners, and pharmacists, and a patient here may visit that pharmacy to get a prescription drug refill. In other cases, a patient may visit for medicinal relief against the common cold or flu during influenza season, or they may get treatment for an upper respiratory problem. The nurses at these clinic can provide stitches and bandages for shallow cuts, and they can provide treatment for wrist or ankle sprains, too. Four in five of these clinics may provide care for bone fractures, and patients may visit to get lotion and ointment for a bad rash or sunburn.
Visiting Pain Centers
What about a pain clinic? The simplest way to define a pain clinic is any clinic whose staff and medical services can treat chronic or sudden pain such as lower back or spine pain, arthritis, pinched nerves and cramped muscles, and the like. Many different chronic conditions exist, and many Americans suffer from chronic back pain in particular, and the elderly may suffer both spine pain and arthritis. In particular, the human spine, while an evolutionary wonder, spends a lifetime fighting gravity, and that may lead to pain later on. Among the elderly, many decades of fighting gravity will collapse the spine and pinch nerves and strain muscles.
Nearly half of all working Americans admit that they get back pain, and experts say that around 80% of Americans will experience it at some point in their lives. What causes it? Often, surveyed Americans blamed ongoing stress for their back pain, and other causes may include years of manual labor, pregnancy, or suffering an injury, such as a sports injury. If someone is suffering back pain, they may explain this to their doctor (this happens often), and they will be referred to the staff at a pain clinic.
In turn, this may lead to a patient getting non-invasive medical care from specialists. Many Americans visit a chiropractor, an expert who can use their bare hands to adjust the patient’s bones and muscles to relieve pain and restore flexibility in the joints. Similarly, a patient may get private yoga sessions at a local studio, and this involves stretches and poses that will naturally relieve pressure on the joints, nerves, and muscles to clear away pain and restore the patient’s flexibility and arcs of motion. The elderly in particular may do this to restore flexibility, as may someone who is recovering from a sports injury.