If you’ve been feeling constant stress, then you’re not alone. At least 2 in 3 adults say that they’ve experienced increased stress over the course of the pandemic, with nearly half of adults reporting that their stress levels have taken a physical and emotional toll, resulting in a high increase in burnout. Burnout is what happens when you are physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted from the excessive and prolonged stress you experience from the constant demands of everyday life. When burnout happens, it’s important to find ways of recovering and managing your stress, as it can affect almost every part of your life, including your home, relationships, work, and social life. Here’s what we have to say about burnout and how to handle it.
Both chronic stress and burnout are gradual processes. If you are living your life with high levels of stress, then your well-being is at risk. Chronic stress causes significant damage to your emotional and mental health by narrowing your ability to think clearly, function efficiently, and enjoy life on a regular basis. When chronic stress becomes unmanageable for long periods, then burnout develops. Burnout is the red flag, indicating that something is wrong and needs to be fixed to prevent a major breakdown.
Burnout affects everyone in different ways but presents very common symptoms that affect people in varying degrees. These symptoms include:
All of these symptoms can affect anyone, but burnout is a highly prevalent problem among those in high-risk, heavily demanding careers such as medical nurses, emergency responders, construction workers, and financial institutions. The fine line between chronic stress and burnout comes from the feeling of not being in control over your circumstances and, in many ways, can feel like drowning.
In urgent care, many people can experience health problems, including frequent illnesses and eventual chronic diseases, from the onset of burnout. It’s important to address these stress problems early before they become overwhelming and impossible to manage. To help with this, some tips we can offer to manage burnout include:
If you feel you’re at risk of workplace burnout and need help, then your local urgent care practice can provide you with the resources you need to build resistance to stress and adversity and find treatments for chronic stress.
Would you recognize you were experiencing trouble with your heart? Most know that if your arm is hurting, you’re having trouble breathing, and your chest hurts, those aren’t good signs. There are other signs of heart issues that aren’t as well-known. Many of these warning signs can appear in places other than your chest. This makes it hard to identify that your body is trying to tell you that your heart is in trouble.
The less typical signs of heart disease are more common in those who have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, are overweight or are above the age of 60. The more risk factors apply to you, the more concerned you should be about watching for signs of heart trouble. If you are demonstrating any of the following indicators, your heart may be trying to warn you:
Numerous other signs point to a potential heart attack, but these are the more prominent and easily identified.
Get a consultation with your physician if you have multiple risk factors associated with heart disease and cardiac problems. You must start taking steps to address your heart concerns immediately. They’ll help you get your health on track and take steps to protect your heart against disease.
For people who love summer, it’s a great season for picnics, camping events, and summer vacations. As more people begin traveling and spending time outdoors, spiders, mosquitos, and wasps are just a few of the insects known to bite and sting. Bug bites are common during the summer, and it’s important to know which bites should be ignored and which ones require a trip to urgent care for treatment. Various bites and stings can be potentially life-threatening if not cared for immediately, and learning how to detect bites can help make sure that you’re treated.
In many cases, insect bites, mosquitos, and beetles can cause irritations to the skin, but most of the time are known to be harmless. In rarer situations, bites from common insects can become a lot worse than intended, often because these bites can pass pathogens and viruses into the bloodstream and skin. When this occurs, there are some symptoms that you should watch out for, including:
Other symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, and fatigue require emergency medical attention, especially if potentially bitten by spiders such as brown recluses, stung by hornets or wasps, and bitten by ticks. If any redness, swelling, or hardening around the skin bite worsens over the next 24 to 72 hours, seeking out urgent care as soon as possible can help diagnose your insect bite and treat it. Paying attention to insect bites during the summer can help save your life, and while reactions to insect bites are rare, if you feel worried about your symptoms, stop by your local urgent care provider for information about summertime safety and bugs bite care.
Telehealth has become a vitally important part of today’s healthcare, and for urgent care practice, patients can highly benefit from telehealth services as they can provide meaningful, responsive interactions in urgent care scenarios. Telehealth has been rising over the last ten years, as the integration of telehealth services has nearly doubled in growth, and about 75% of today’s hospitals in the United States now use telehealth services as part of today’s standard of care. Over time, more practices will be able to integrate these systems into their models of treatment, and for patients, it provides them with the security they need to address medical problems and find treatments. But what exactly is telehealth all about? Here’s how it’s changing everything.
Telehealth refers to telecommunication and electronic technologies we use every day to provide healthcare services at a distance. A sub-branch of this, called telemedicine, works by delivering medical treatments from a distance, such as a physician interacting with a patient at a different location. Telehealth, however, covers a broader range of services, incorporating aspects of low-risk urgent care, medication management, chronic condition monitoring, and health coaching sessions.
Because of today’s technology, patients can now access their health services through chat, voice calls, phone, email, patient portals, and even monitoring devices. All of these methods provide different forms of communication, allowing physicians to monitor their patient’s health, communicate with patients at different times, and review information for health conditions.
In urgent care, telehealth services can provide patients in urgent situations with the resources they need in a timely manner. Telehealth can be argued as being more crucial in certain situations due to its reliable forms of communication. But in regards to what types of visits can be used, how physicians can treat patients and other means of urgent care services, patients can experience multiple benefits, including:
Telehealth comes with many benefits for urgent care. If you need urgent care and are unable to find the time or resources for an in-person appointment, reach out to your local urgent care practice to find out about treatment options, specialists in your area, and ways your urgent care physician can help promote better health.
If you’ve ever had a UTI or urinary tract infection, you’re familiar with the impossible and uncomfortable it can be. This bacterial infection causes a burning sensation when sufferers urinate while giving them a persistent need to urinate. When you feel the symptoms of this condition coming on, you may think it’s time to schedule a doctor’s appointment. However, the longer you wait, the more severe the infection. It will take longer for you to overcome it and finally get relief. Find out why a trip to Urgent Care may be the right move by learning more about UTIs.
Aside from prevention, the best thing you can do for a UTI is to get treatment as promptly as possible. Acting quickly will ensure you catch it when it can most easily be treated and limit how long you suffer with them. Visiting your local urgent care will immediately lead you to relief from UTI symptoms. After that, it’s time to follow up with your primary care team to ensure that you can prevent a recurrence in the future.
The advance in digital technology has had a profound impact on our world. How we interact with our loved ones, form friendships, do business, and even receive medical care has felt its touch. While there is reasonable caution about the potential risks of integrating our physical and virtual selves, the benefits are unquestionable. One area that demonstrates this soundly is that of medical wearable devices. These innovations have made it possible to track patient conditions more thoroughly and get better diagnostic data than ever before. This data, in turn, results in more effective care and faster outcomes for all involved.
Testing and monitoring patient health is part of the diagnostic process that requires a hospital stay. Even in cases where this wasn’t necessary, there would be inconvenient visits to the office. These visits often involved stress tests in determining if triggering a patient’s reported symptoms was possible. This was an inefficient and often ineffective method of collecting this information. It was difficult to provide a proper diagnosis without the ability to trigger the patient’s symptoms. Further, even with a diagnosis, it could be difficult to determine a proper treatment with the data provided.
Wearable Medical Devices allow this information to be collected more naturally. As patients go about their day, the device reports back to the doctor. By remotely monitoring the heart rate, blood pressure, and other biometrics, the doctor gets an image as it occurs during the patient’s day. This allows the doctor to see the flare-ups of their condition as the patient experiences them and understand the circumstances surrounding it. The result is a better ability to diagnose and prescribe treatment for the condition. Some forms of wearable medical devices include:
Some devices aren’t designed to report information back to the doctor. One example is Immunotouch. Scientists created this innovative device during the COVID-19 pandemic to remind patients not to touch their faces. The device would notify them anytime they reached for their face. This reminder helped to prevent them from contracting the COVID-19 infection.
Speak to your physician to determine what types of wearable medical devices may be appropriate for your health conditions.
Modern technology seems to know no bounds. We can watch our favorite shows from anywhere on tablets or smartphones. With a few quick taps and swipes, we can get answers to almost any question we can imagine. The instant a book is released, we can have it on our phones without even visiting the bookstore. All of this has profoundly affected our quality of life and educational options. However, not all of the impacts of modern technology have been positive. With all this connectivity comes a host of new problems, and medical science is just beginning to grasp the range of these concerns. Mental and physical health can be impacted by spending excessive time glued to a screen.
The presence of this technology in our lives has significant impacts we may not immediately notice. Its ever-present nature has shown that these seeming miracles of technology have altered the way we live, the way we exercise, and even the way we love. In all of this, there were inevitably going to be some regrettable impacts. Below are four known consequences of spending too much time in front of an electronic screen:
These factors just scratch the surface of what we’re learning about the impact of electronics on our day-to-day life.
We must address the dual nature of our new digital reality. There are impressive and far-reaching benefits to the access we have to information today. People can make friends and connect across vast distances. Online friendships can become as essential to our mental health and are just as valid as physical in-person friendships. The concept that these digital friendships aren’t as important or real as traditional friendships are outdated and incorrect. In addition to these elements, the digital world helps shrink our world. It also shows that despite our differences, we all come with the same concerns. The future of our world is indelibly going to mix digital and physical realities more as time goes on. We must take care of both these worlds and learn to live while straddling them.
There are millions of people all over the world who come down with a case of pneumonia each year. In the US alone, there are nearly 120 million cases annually. One common misconception about Pneumonia is that it is a disease in and of itself. The term describes the appearance of multiple symptoms together. This means the underlying cause of Pneumonia can vary significantly, with a common source being the flu. Keep reading to learn more about Pneumonia.
Since Pneumonia is a collection of symptoms resulting from other conditions, it comes in many forms. When Pneumonia bacterial infection causes pneumonia, antibiotics may be able to help treat it. When Pneumonia is, instead, the result of a virus, there are a limited number of treatments available. This fact is particularly concerning since Pneumonia most commonly occurs in the very old and very young. Some other facts about Pneumonia include:
Pneumonia is a persistent condition that can hang on for a long time, even when treated actively. Some patients may struggle with it for as many as eight weeks before they recover fully. Further, the hospital is a common place to contract the condition. Those who are placed on ventilators have a higher risk of developing Pneumonia than those who are not. If you want to know how to protect yourself and your family from Pneumonia, reach out to your physician for guidance.
As health problems continue to rise, urgent care remains an important source of treatment for many non-life-threatening conditions. Nearly 70% of urgent care treatment involves care for the ears, nose, and throat for those who constantly suffer from ENT problems. Most patients under these circumstances will most likely make their first visit to an urgent care facility for excessive snoring, sinus infections, dizziness, and excessive allergies. Below, we will describe some of the various treatments performed for common ENT problems and help you decide whether you should see an urgent care facility or an ENT specialist for treatment.
More often than not, people with ENT conditions are making more visits to their local urgent care than their primary physicians or ENT specialists. One of the main reasons people often see an urgent care doctor over their specialist is the time and effort it takes to get a referral to an ENT specialist, especially if their symptoms become so prominent to the point where waiting isn’t an option. In the pursuit of care, urgent care practices can treat immediate symptoms that, although not life-threatening, can severely impact one’s quality of life and present an immediate concern. So, what kinds of conditions can an urgent care facility treat? Some common ENT conditions that people see the Urgent Care for include:
The symptoms often associated with the conditions above can be a highly unpleasant experience, especially if they cannot be properly managed. What it takes to receive treatment from a specialist can be dauntingly long. Still, at an urgent care facility, patients can find immediate relief that allows them to wait for their specialist referral for an appointment. Urgent care in these circumstances can be an excellent first stop for your ENT concerns, but seeing a specialist for long-term problems such as cholesteatoma and dysphagia will need to be seen by a specialist as they can present health concerns that impact your life significantly.
ENT treatments at urgent care facilities are most often for acute cases. The symptoms come on suddenly or occur frequently enough to be treated as a one-time instance of the condition easily. However, chronic, reoccurring symptoms need to be seen by a specialist as they can properly diagnose the condition and help provide you with the treatment you need. Some common treatments found in urgent care for acute ENT conditions can include
If you are suffering from any symptoms associated with an ENT condition that present immediate but non-life-threatening circumstances to your health, make sure to visit your local urgent care facility for treatment. Through your local urgent care team, they’ll provide you with the care you need and help redirect you to a specialist if necessary.
There have been countless ongoing studies on its effectiveness since the COVID vaccine was introduced. One thing has become abundantly clear as a result. The vaccines have been proven to be effective and safe and the most important step anyone can take towards controlling the pandemic. Every newly vaccinated person counts as one less person likely to contract and spread the disease. With fewer people contracting COVID, there are also fewer opportunities for it to mutate. For nearly a year and a half, the vast majority of those being vaccinated have been adults or over the age of 12. Relatively recently, however, it has been declared safe for those aged five and over.
Many children express a general concern about seeing their medical practitioner. It’s not unusual for children to specifically be afraid of receiving an injection. Whether your child is one of those who are skittish about doctor visits or not, it can help to prepare them for their vaccination visit. There’s a lot of information out there about the shot itself, and the vaccine in particular. By preparing your child for their visit you can ensure that they know what to expect. Consider taking a few of the following steps prior to the day of their appointment:
Beyond preparing them for their vaccination, these tips set a great precedent for the future. They’ll know they can speak to you about their concerns and expect honest answers. They’ll also learn to be engaged in their health care and that they have choices when it comes to treatment. Most of all, they’ll learn not to be afraid of doctor visits in years to come.