When your child tells you that they don't feel well, as a parent you can feel helpless. If you're not medically trained, a whole host of thoughts about what could possibly be going wrong race through your head in a flurry. Despite knowing that most of the time everything is just fine, it's hard to keep ourselves level-headed when our child is in distress.

Luckily, your local urgent care centers are there to fill the gaps when your pediatrician isn't available. Nearly 14% of children had one urgent care or retail health clinic visit (13.7%), while 8.2% had two visits and 4.5% had three or more visits. Instead of freaking out, look at these common reasons for taking your child to urgent care clinics and know that everything will be okay.

If It's Not an Emergency, Urgent Care Will Be Fine

Although we never want to see our child unwell for longer than we have to, the honest truth is that you should never take your child to an emergency room unless it is truly an emergency. If you don't know how to identify a proper emergency, use the common definition of "life-threatening and possibly fatal" to guide your behavior. This usually means gushing blood, constant vomiting, or interactions with poison/weapons.

Urgent care centers are not only a calmer environment, but are set up to deal with the "less than emergency" types of situations. Broken bones, flu symptoms, and persistent coughs are in their wheelhouse, and your child will be just fine visiting the doctor or nurses at this facility.

Your Pediatrician Isn't Available for Consultation

As a parent, there is perhaps nothing more soothing than being able to call your pediatrician's office and run something by them that you are worried about. From high fevers to odd eating habits, parents just want to be reassured that there is nothing to worry about so that they can go back to their normal lives and raising their children.

When your pediatrician isn't available, the best course of action is to simply wait until the next day for a proper consultation. But if something seems pressing, or your child is in constant pain, then the next best step is to take them to any of the urgent care centers around you. While there's no substitute for your pediatrician in terms of medical history and care, urgent care centers are a great second choice for quality healthcare.

Better Safe than Sorry

Instead of trying to decide whether to take your child to the hospital or urgent care, always err on "better safe than sorry" and call one of your local urgent care centers immediately to decide whether you're fine to take them there or call an ambulance. At worst, you will stay put and dial 9-1-1, at best you will finally know to drive over to the urgent care center or have someone come get them. Be safe rather than sorry and call soon!

Be Safe, Be Healthy, Go to an Urgent Care Center

If you or your child is in need of medical care and it's not life-threatening, consider going to urgent care centers instead of the hospital. MedFirst Urgent Care and other centers like it specialize in helping to treat what's wrong right now so that it doesn't develop into a larger issue down the road or necessitate a hospital visit. If your pediatrician isn't available for consultation and you're not experiencing a truly life-threatening condition, urgent care centers are a much better option than emergency rooms. Instead of taking up space in the latter, be well and stay safe by going to urgent care instead.