Pediatric Urgent Care

Last week, I was in pediatric urgent care, a drop-in ambulatory care clinic that sees children who require immediate but not emergency level care. It's a fun setting. We don't know what kinds of things will come in, and we can't predict when patients will come. During downtime, attendings lecture, but at any time, we can be interrupted by four patients arriving. Common things being common, the mornings are usually taken up by kids under 4 or children sent home from school because of fever or pink eye. In the afternoon, we saw more elementary school age children. I got to learn the bread and butter of looking into ears for otitis media, prescribing drops for conjunctivitis (although there's no good evidence, schools demand it), and gauging severity of asthma and other respiratory illnesses. I saw a lot of rashes, fevers of unknown source, and accidental trauma. It felt a little like an emergency room, but much more controlled with diseases that medical students could feel comfortable with. Parents were always happy to have me see the child. Now that I'm nearing the end of my third year, I feel a lot more comfortable and confident in my clinical skills. I have one more week of urgent care at the end of this block (they sandwich my inpatient weeks).