Should You Go to Urgent Care for Pink Eye?
Pink eye can cause painful eye irritation and redness, but it will usually clear up in a few weeks. You might consider visiting urgent care or a walk-in clinic if you’re unable to go to your primary care doctor.
Pink eye is a condition that causes irritation or inflammation in your eye. Officially known as conjunctivitis, pink eye earned its name for the pink to reddish color the inflammation causes in the white part of your eye.
Whether you need immediate medical attention for pink eye depends on your symptoms and their severity. This article covers when to consider going to urgent care or another healthcare facility to get help for pink eye.
You can go to an urgent care facility or walk-in clinic for virtually any condition. Urgent care centers and walk-in clinics are designed to treat infections, injuries, and minor medical conditions that are not life threatening yet still require medical treatment or prescription medication.
Where to go for care
As a general rule, emergency rooms are designed to handle medical emergencies, which might include traumatic injuries, heart attack or stroke, or symptoms that affect breathing or circulation.
It’s unlikely that you’ll be turned away from the emergency room for a non-life-threatening medical issue like pink eye. But you might have to wait a while to be seen. In the emergency room, people with life threatening conditions or who are the sickest are treated first.
The problem isn’t a shortage of people wanting to be doctors, but rather, too few opportunities for training. Medical schools have increased class sizes by 30% since 2002, but federal funding for residency training – an essential step in the process of becoming a practicing physician – has not increased since 1997, according to Inside Higher Ed.
On the other hand, an urgent care or walk-in clinic can be helpful when you need treatment outside of the working hours of your doctor’s office or when you’re in pain and are seeking relief. These medical facilities can also be helpful for receiving a diagnosis and getting treatment for non-life-threatening conditions like strep throat and pink eye.
If you’re not experiencing a life threatening condition and your symptoms are relatively mild or tolerable, consider making an after-hours or early morning call to your primary care doctor’s office.
Same-day appointments might be available, and with most health insurance plans, a primary care visit is typically more affordable than a visit to the emergency room.
