About
Life happens.
People get sick. People get injured. When life happens, what should you do?
Sometimes illnesses and injuries are life or limb threatening. Things like heart attacks, strokes, severe asthma, broken bones with crooked limbs, deep lacerations, severe pain, bleeding, worsening headaches, gunshot wounds, seizures, moderate to severe dehydration and fever in unimmunized children or fever in very young babies can be very serious. These should be assessed and treated in an Emergency Room.
But what should you do when you know that it’s not an emergency, but it needs to be addressed?
Most of life’s unexpected illnesses or injuries do not pose an immediate threat to life or limb, and dealing with them does not require the resources of an Emergency Room. Things like minor cuts, burns, abrasions, rashes, localized infections of the skin, sore throats, sore ears, fever in immunized children over 3 months, minor fractures and sprains, mild dehydration and colds and flus are all things that can be treated without having to go to an Emergency Room.
In many of these cases, a visit to your primary care provider should be your first choice. However, sometimes these conditions might require more than what is available at a walk-in clinic or at your family doctor’s office. Or, you might not be able to get an appointment to see your primary care provider within what you feel is a reasonable time frame.
This is where The Minor Illness & Injury Clinic can help.
The Minor Illness & Injury Clinic wants to change how urgent care medicine is delivered by providing convenient, high-quality, appointment-based health care for children and adults suffering from non-life threatening illness or injury.
The Minor Illness & Injury Clinic is staffed with experienced ER physicians, pediatricians and ER nurses. We provide the expertise that patients have come to expect from an Emergency Room, but in a convenient, appointment-based clinic environment.
What’s more, we have equipment commonly used in the ER. We can perform X-rays. We can perform some minor lab tests. We can provide splinting and casting, and can repair minor wounds with stitches or skin glue.
We differ from the ER because we ONLY see non-life threatening illness and injury. This is why we can offer appointments instead of a waiting room.
ERs have to be ready to see the sickest patients at anytime. As such, patients are triaged based on the severity of their illness or injury. The sickest and most injured patients are seen first. The least sick are seen last. It doesn’t matter if the least sick person has been waiting for hours, if a sicker person comes through the door, that person trumps the least sick person.
This is how emergency departments need to be run. This is what allows them to saves lives. This should never change.
Again, we differ from the ER because we ONLY see non-life threatening illness and injury.
By moving to appointment-based assessments, we are trying to eliminate the time our patients spend in a waiting room. This offers several advantages to our patients:
- Less time waiting = more time doing other things (work, school, etc.)
- Less time waiting = less exposure to airborne germs
- Less time waiting = less stress when you or your children aren’t feeling well
We think this approach makes sense.
We think that the time is right for The Minor Illness & Injury Clinic.
Book an appointment to come and see us the next time life happens to you or your loved ones!