It’s a scenario that every parent dreads: Your child wakes up in the middle of the night and tells you they aren’t feeling well. Worse yet, you may find that they’ve already gotten sick in their bedroom or the bathroom. It’s something no parents wants to deal with, but ultimately you’re feeling bad for your child, wondering if they’re ok and what you can to help them feel better.


When it comes to getting medical care for your child, there are a lot of options on the table. You can make a trip to the emergency room, but you might be in for a long wait. You could make an appointment with a pediatrician or your primary care doctor, but you may or may not be able to get in right away. If you’re like most parents, you want the quickest path to making your child feel better. The sooner they get better, the sooner everything goes back to normal.

So how do you get quick care for your child? You make a trip to your local urgent care center.


Urgent care clinics are walk-in clinics where you can get in for treatment fast and get treated for a whole spectrum of everyday, non-life-threatening illnesses. More than three people visit urgent care centers every week across the United States and it’s not hard to see why. After all, your average urgent care center can treat fevers, stomach pains, ear infections, sports injuries, sprains, colds, muscle strains, STDs and many other common aliments.


Not all of those above ailments apply to children, but an urgent care is the place to take your child for colds, fevers, pink eye, hand-and-mouth disease, allergies, strep throat and even improper ingestion (swallowing something they’re not supposed to).


So why should you take your child to an urgent care? It’s a fair question since ultimately you’re looking for a place that’s going to make your child better and treat them with care. On that front, an urgent care can offer many benefits:

• Experienced personnel who have experience dealing with children, especially for making a diagnosis and treatment.
• Having plenty of resources and equipment to treat children
• Having an on-site pediatrician

Those three benefits are great, but another big benefit of your local urgent care facility is that you’ll get in to see the doctor a lot faster. If you’re tired of waiting in hospitals or primary care offices, know that you’ll spent maybe 15-20 minutes waiting at an urgent care. As if that wasn’t enough, most urgent care facilities are open much longer than other medical care facilities. Most are open until 7 p.m. and are open on weekends. Some are also open later than 7 p.m., giving you flexibility to get your child the care they need.


Another benefit of urgent cares is they save you time and money. Let’s face it, if your child is sick, you want treatment as fast as you can get it. Urgent cares can offer that, in the form of retail clinics where you can get flu shots, Z-packs and other needed medications. This allows you to get in and out and get your child back home and into bed.


Urgent cares also offer treatments at much lower costs than you might find at hospitals or primary care offices. This is great if you’re on a budget because an urgent care facility offers price transparency: that means you can see how much medicines and treatments cost before you buy anything. This saves you from surprise bills when you take your child elsewhere.


Making the call to take your child in for medical treatment can be a tough one, especially when you consider their symptoms and whether or not it’s in the middle of the night. It’s important to note if your child is dealing with a serious medical issue, don’t hesitate to take them in to the emergency room. For non-life-threatening injuries however, an urgent care can save you time, money, aggravation and make your child feel better much faster.