Clinical Feature Articles

Urgent message: Patients who have had recent surgical procedures may present to urgent care centers for reasons ranging from seeking reassurance to presentation of life-threatening complications. Tracey Quail Davidoff, MD Introduction Patients often experience complications—or, at least as often, fear they’re experiencing complications—after a surgical procedure. While the surgeon is often the best person for them to consult, this may not be possible for a variety of reasons. Outpatient surgical centers are opening almost at the same rate as urgent care centers,1 but may not be well prepared to handle …
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 Urgent message: Urgent care providers often see acute public health emergencies due to easy patient accessibility. It is important to identify communicable disease rapidly to control any risk of a community outbreak. This article will focus on mumps, measles and varicella (chickenpox). Carmen N. Burrell, DO, Melinda J. Sharon, MPH, and Megan Kessell, BA In recent years, outbreaks of uncommon infectious diseases have occurred in schools and communities, due to increasing travel exposures, decreasing vaccination compliance, and varying effectiveness of vaccination response. In 2016, over 6,000 cases of mumps were …
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Urgent message: As patients start to feel the effects of the 2018–2019 influenza season, urgent care centers can expect to see visits by patients with related symptoms increase. Providers must be prepared to identify and treat patients most at risk for complications and poor outcomes—armed with old standbys and a newly approved antiviral agent. Samantha Arnold, DO Introduction Last month, JUCM explored prevention, diagnosis, and testing for influenza. In this issue, we focus on management of patients who have been diagnosed with influenza, with attention to duration of infectivity, complications …
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Urgent message: The urgent care clinician must have a thorough understanding of different influenza types and strains, disease course, and preventive measures—including, but not limited to, vaccination—at the outset of flu season.   Introduction Influenza is most deadly in the very young, very old, and those with comorbid conditions. Typically, onset is rapid and seasonal, though patients may initially present with few or nonspecific symptoms. Complicating things further, there are many different strains of the flu. Spread can occur from the host even before the onset of symptoms, and current …
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Urgent message: Seeking information beyond the stated history  can prompt  important information that informs the true diagnosis. This is especially true in patients  with a complicated or potentially embarrassing history.  Case Presentation A 59-year-old female with a past medical history of type 2 diabetes and hypertension presents to an urgent care facility with complaints of abdominal pain. She is well known to the urgent care staff. She is consistently noncompliant with medical care. Her hypertension and diabetes are both uncontrolled. She has a right below-knee amputation and is wheelchair-bound. She …
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