When to Take Your Child to an Urgent Care Center

When to Take Your Child to an Urgent Care Center

A mother taking her sick daughters temperature

Urgent care centers are fantastic medical resources. They offer emergency services without involving the same wait time and cost of a typical emergency room visit. Furthermore, they don’t require appointments the way that your primary care physician would. Parents in particular can rely on urgent care centers for relief when their children are sick or injured; but it can be difficult to determine, at times, what is worth visiting an urgent care center over, and what can wait. In 2019 alone 26.4% of children in the U.S. visited an urgent care center. With that in mind, we’re exploring what symptoms mean that you need to visit an urgent care center.

1. A Severe Sore Throat

Children can develop severe sore throats without many other symptoms, which can be confusing if you’re a concerned parent. Severe sore throats can be indicative of several different viruses, perhaps most commonly strep throat. Fortunately, urgent care centers offer a variety of different tests. These tests can be administered if your child is suffering from a severe sore throat, and you can know what to do from there.

2. Severe Ear Pain

While a regular earache can wait for an appointment with your pediatrician, severe ear pain should be addressed more immediately. This is especially true if it’s accompanied by a fever, vomiting, diarrhea, or drainage from the ear. Medical professionals at an urgent care center can determine whether they can treat the earache directly, or if you need to move on to the emergency room.

3. A Rash with Accompanying Symptoms

A rash may be simple enough, and on its own could potentially wait to be seen by your pediatrician. But if a severe rash is accompanied by a fever or other concerning symptoms, you may want to visit an urgent care center. A rash accompanied by a fever in particular could be indicative of certain viruses.

4. Abdominal Pains

If your child is suffering from sharp pains in their stomach or abdomen, you may want to take them to an urgent care center. Oftentimes, this kind of pain is associated with acute conditions, like food poisoning. Alternately, they could be associated with more minor stomach aches. It’s important that you visit an urgent care center to make sure that the condition is being addressed properly.

An urgent care center can take away your worries and help you figure out what is wrong with your child. Avoid the emergency room waiting times and visit your local urgent care center whenever you need.

Skip to content