Urgent Care Doctors Note: Fill & Download for Free

Chest pain: If you have chest pain, DO NOT GO TO AN URGENT CARE. Unless it is crystal clear obvious that your chest pain is 100% due to your bronchitis or a muscle strain, then YOU JUST PURCHASED a ride in an ambulance to the ER. I shake my head in disbelief at people who have chest pain, wonder if it is a heart attack, and drive to—the urgent care. How stupid is that, really? It is a combination of denial (oh, if I go to the urgent care I will look so chill, and it won’t be a heart attack) and cheapness (If I really call 911, I might have to pay for it) but guess what? You are going to the emergency room, baby. In an ambulance. PLUS you get a bill from the urgent care. So just don’t. Chest pain = call 911.Abdominal pain: If you have severe abdominal pain, DO NOT GO TO AN URGENT CARE. Oh, yes, sure, I know how to diagnose your abdominal pain. I will just put you in my imaginary CAT scanner, and then I will draw an imaginary blood test and guess what the results are. Urgent care centers cannot get stat blood tests and imaging tests. Chances are very high that you need to go to an emergency room. But you thought you would “skip the line” and go get “quick” care at an urgent care. Bad idea. There is no way to diagnose your abdominal pain without the ability to do, you know, tests. So, maybe if you are lucky the doctor will diagnose you with pelvic inflammatory disease (usually gonorrhea) and you might get by with just a shot of antibiotic. But more often, further testing is needed. Testing that they do not have at the urgent care center.Severe headache: “This is the worst headache of my life and it just came on suddenly out of nowhere” Just go to the damn ER. You already know that they are going to do a CT. So why bother going to the urgent care? WHY? So you can give the urgent care doc a ruptured aneurysm? Yes, they do need to make sure you aren’t like, bleeding into the brain or something. So just skip the urgent care. You will be glad you did.Complex lacerations: So, you can’t feel anything beyond the wound, and blood is rhythmically spurting out of a severed artery? Yeah, just go to the ER. The ER doctor won’t be able to sew it up, either. They will call a legitimate surgeon to sew up your extreme injury. Why do you think that someone who has a waiting room full of 100 coughing people has a couple of hours, an operating room staff, and expertise needed to repair that? You weren’t thinking, I know. Wouldn’t you really prefer a surgeon to do that? I would. Go to the ER. There is no surgeon on call at the urgent care. The urgent care will suture minor lacerations, but if you look like an extra in a slasher movie, just go to the ER.NOTE: It is a “walk in” clinic. By “walk in” they mean that you can walk in. If someone has to carry you in, or several of your friends have to drag you in, YOU SHOULD NOT BE AT A WALK IN CLINIC. That’s right, the “drag your ass in” clinic is down the street. At the emergency room.OTOH: The ER is NOT the place to go for your cold or your paper cut. Seriously. If you have a minor problem, don’t clog up the ER. If you can imagine your mother saying, “Well, honey, let’s put some iodine and a Band-Aid on that,” then most likely the urgent care is fine. There are tetanus shots at the urgent care. This has been a public service announcement.

I walk into Urgent Care after coming from my companies medical care office. After some time, I am placed United a room, the Nurse asks what my issue is, I lift my shirt to show her a bright red spot the size of a quarter, with radiating rings that my husband has put black permanent marker on in little dots with the date written. The latest ring is huge, about 12 inches in diameter but it is semi oval shaped.I tell the Nurse my company sent me over for antibiotics. She makes notes and leaves. Some time later in comes the doctor, along with the Nurse.Repeat above question and show and tell about antibiotics.He says I need a cortisone cream.I tell him my Company Doctor and Nurse said I need antibiotics.Prescription is written for cream.I go to Walgreens to pick up the cream.The Pharmaicist asks why I need the cream, I lift my shirt and show her the artwork by my husband over the last 4 days.He says you need antibiotics.I said I told the Doctor at Urgent Care that my Company Medical Staff said I need antibiotics, but he prescribed the cream.I take the cream home, and apply it as needed.Two days later, I have more artwork.I go to Urgent Care. Same Nurse. What’s the up issue, I lift my shirt, I tell her it is getting bigger. I need antibiotics.She assures me I will receive antibiotics.Doctor comes in same as with the Nurse. I say I need antibiotics.He writes a script for antbiotics.Pharmacy again, pharmacist is now happier but rolls her eyes regarding the Doctor at Urgent Care.I take antibiotics, rings stop growing, no more artwork for my husband, my work medical Clinic wants to see me, they are astonished the Doctor at Urgent Care is totally clueless.I stop by the Pharmacy to talk to the Pharmacist, ask her what I had.Deer tick - you needed antibiotics.We both laugh a bit.I tell her next time I am coming to her first to make sure the diagnosis is given to me, and I know what I need for sure.We laugh again.So much wasted time away from work.Paid twice for Urgent Care, tried to go to a different Urgent Care but they told me to go back to the first place.I have insurance. Lucky for me I was not dying.Incompetent Doctor at Urgent Care.Second Urgent Care refuses to treat me because I started over at Urgent Care #1. Couldn’t be any sadder about the state of our healthcare system in the USA.

When my daughter was a pre-teen (early 90s) she was prone to ear infections, especially in the summer when she spent a lot of time swimming.One Saturday she complained of intense pain in her ear. I didn’t want to take her to the ER (the insurance co-pay for non-emergency, “medical” visits was insane), and our usually quite responsive family doctor was out of town.So we went to an urgent care office, one of several operated by a local (not national) outfit. After waiting for an hour, the doctor came in wearing rather spiffy golf attire, stood on the other side of the room, and crossed his arms. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked. My daughter explained the nature of her discomfort, when it began, and how the situation had gotten worse.“Uh huh,” the doctor said. I was waiting for him to take my daughter’s temperature, look at her throat and ears… you know, an actual medical examination. Instead, he opened the door to the outer office. “Please step into the waiting room. I’ll be with you in a moment.”We followed his instructions. A minute later, he came out, handed the receptionist a piece of paper, continued through the office, out the door, into his car, and out of the parking lot. The receptionist wrote my daughter’s name, birthdate and address on the paper and handed it to me. It was a pre-printed prescription for prednisone and amoxicillin.I asked the receptionist, “Is there another doctor available? My daughter is allergic to amoxicillin.” She asked for the prescription back and went in to the examination room. A few minutes later she returned with another prescription for prednisone and azithromycin. It had apparently been pre-signed by the doctor who was long gone.“Wait a minute,” I protested. “Who wrote and signed this script? ““Excuse me?” the receptionist asked, gathering her car keys and putting on her coat.“What if my daughter is allergic to azithromycin? For that matter, what if the problem isn’t a bacterial infection? The doctor didn’t even look at her.”“You can go the emergency room if you need a follow-up. I’m sorry, but we’re closing now.”We did go the local ER. The doctor cleaned out my daughter’s ear and noted she had both swimmer’s ear and otitis media (a middle ear infection). Her throat was a bit red, so the doctor took a strep culture. He instilled drops in my daughter’s ear and gave us a prescription for more ear drops and a different oral antibiotic.On Monday, I also called my health insurer and the state board of medicine. My insurance company told me not to pay the urgent care center, and waived the higher co-pay for the ER visit. The state professional licensing bureau sent me a complaint form, which I completed and returned.Within a month, the urgent care office was closed. Two months later I received a letter from the state telling me the physician’s license had been suspended- not because of my daughter’s treatment or lack thereof, but because he “had a license or other authorization to practice the profession disciplined by the proper licensing authority of another state.” They explained it was much faster to suspend him for that reason than to conduct an investigation into our specific incident. I later learned Dr. Duffer had moved on to yet another state.The local urgent care chain also closed shortly thereafter.