Silverdale Medical offers Urgent Care Services from Monday to Sunday, 8am - 8pm, 365 days a year.
General Practice appointments are provided Monday to Friday, 8am - 5pm.
Urgent Care is a branch of medicine that covers the treatment of accidents and urgent medical problems.
When coming to urgent care, patients should consider:
- Is the issue medically serious enough that it cannot be left untreated for 48 hours.
- Is it a new or worsening serious acute condition.
However if the condition is imminently life threatening such as a heart attack, stroke, or severe life threatening trauma then calling 111 and taking an ambulance straight to the hospital is usually the better course of action.
Urgent Care Facilities generally have more diagnostic and clinical services available to them than most standard general practice facilities (usually X-rays, ECG and casting).
Urgent Care Services usually coordinate services with accident specialists such as orthopaedic specialists on site for follow-up care.
Urgent Care Facilities however, usually have less specialists available to them than a full-service hospitals - especially medical specialists in areas such as cardiology, oncology, respirology, endocrinology, general surgery, obstetrics etc.
Urgent Care Service is not provided in booked appointments, but is triaged as patients arrive. This means that patients are not seen on a first come-first served basis by the doctor.
A nurse will take a history, and provide an initial assessment and a triage score. The score indicates how urgently the medical situation must be attended to by the doctor. Patients who arrive with less urgent conditions can sometimes become frustrated seeing people who arrived after them being taken first.
As well, an Urgent Care Service can sometimes be empty and even a minor condition can be seen in ten minutes. But sometimes everyone arrives at the same time and it can be a long wait of many hours to be seen even with a more serious condition.
Patients arriving to an Urgent Care Facility when it is busy, with a minor medical condition that can wait for a GP appointment the following week, might be informed their condition is not sufficiently medically urgent to be seen that day. Receptionists can try to give a patient their best estimate of when they will be called to see the doctor, but there is no guarantee, as the receptionist does not know all the people that might yet arrive, and those people could be given a higher priority triage score.
Urgent Care Service is not the most appropriate place to come for managing chronic conditions. But if a particular circumstance has made the chronic condition into an urgent event, then it might be appropriate to attend the Urgent Care Service. For example renewing your regular blood pressure or cholesterol medications should be done regularly in booked GP appointments. But dealing with a really high or really low blood pressure that leaves you very unwell is good reason to seek care at an Urgent Care.
In general the Urgent Care Service does not take the place of an excellent General Practice doctor relationship. Someone who knows you well over time, and works with you to support your health and well-being is the best person to manage your health screening, immunizations, healthy lifestyle advice, and diagnosis and management of chronic health conditions. In General Practice, your time is more respected because you are provided an appointment. Your General Practice will follow-up with you, and be there for you over time.
Choosing the best service for the situation is the key.
Please click below for all General Practice and Urgent Care prices.
Fee Structure