The pumpkin festive season is an exhilarating event that every family looks forward to. Establishing the festivity with hanging pumpkins, decorative themes, and the most looked-forward trick-or-treating is every child’s dream! As fun, as it is, keeping an eye out for the dreading element of injuries is crucial. Statistics and studies cite serious injuries typically occurring during Halloween, like lacerations, fractures, and many more. About 29% of the children undergo lacerations, and another 13%-18% suffer from contusions, abrasions, features, and sprains.
While these cases are not as extensive for ER-level assistance, it is crucial to understand emergencies. Specific injuries that are not life-threatening but require professional assistance are taken care of by reliable urgent care services. These services are always available during the Halloween season to keep your kids safe during these times.
Professional urgent care services have reliable experts who assist in evaluating and treating injuries without an appointment. You can also check in online and walk in at your convenience. This article will familiarize you with these services and how they can benefit you during Halloween:
What Is Urgent Care?
As mentioned, urgent care services specialize in areas where the medical issue is minor and not life-threatening who require expert and professional evaluation, treatment, and lab equipment to treat it.
Urgent care centers are very different from emergency care ones in that the condition is not life-threatening and severe but requires professional assistance within 24 hours. A few examples are as follows:
- Accidents
- Cuts that require stitches
- Moderate asthma attacks
- Diagnosis requirements like X-rays and CT-scans
- Fever
- Minor fractures
- Infections and skin-related issues
- Retching
- Diarrhea
- Dehydration
How Urgent Care Can Help During Halloween
A state farm study indicates that children are three times more susceptible to car crash accidents during Halloween. Children also suffer from unknown nut allergies and peanut-induced anaphylaxis reactions, which are responsible for 150 deaths in the United States alone. With an estimated injury count of 4,500 in 2017, 41% is due to pumpkin-carving activities and trick-or-treating.
Let’s see how these services can help reduce these numbers during Halloween:
● Cost-Friendly
The urgent care cost is substantially lower than ERs and standard hospital evaluations. This is due to the difference in equipment used for diagnosis and treatment. Suppose your child suffered cuts during pumpkin carvings. Urgent care services could provide multiple stitching options for infected cuts, embedded dirt cuts, shallow cuts, rusted knife cuts, and more at a reasonably affordable cost.
Luckily, about 92% of these services have a wait time of fewer than 30 minutes. This allows access to quick evaluation and treatment to keep your kids safe at an affordable cost range of $165 to $300, where they offer online bill payment and auto payment options.
● Direct Walk-In Facilities
One of the best aspects of these services during Halloween injuries is that you don’t need an appointment to access quick healthcare. You can check in online or walk in at any time convenient. These professionals understand that Halloween injuries can occur at any point in time, especially at night when doctors are usually off the clock. Urgent care services are incredibly flexible and all-inclusive.
● Less Waiting
Emergency rooms are often characterized by more extended wait periods due to the prioritization of critical patients. This situation is not often viable for non-life-threatening situations that require medical assistance. If the hospital is having mass criticalities, you will likely wait for hours together. On this note, urgent care centers operate on a first-come-first-serve basis with high accessibility.
Tips To Prevent Halloween Injuries
- Before Halloween: Make sure you invest in child trackers that can conveniently be clipped on apparel or tied as wristbands. Supervision is necessary for youngsters, and always avoid costumes that restrict breathing. Plan and communicate an appropriate time and route to walk in, and cite a curfew hour.
- During Halloween: Ensure you and your children are well aware of the environment, and instruct them to move in groups at all times. Equip them with flashlights and reflective tapes for easy identification during the dark.
- After Halloween: Go through their chocolate collections and see if any allergens can upset the child’s body. Avoid hard and chewy candies. If you identify a bar of chocolate that is unwrapped or opened, throw it away without hesitation.
Conclusion
Halloween has a heightened risk for adulteration, car accidents by drunk drivers, and even death caused by allergies. Parents are leaving their children for trick-or-treating without supervision, and the death counts and child fatalities are worsening. Following the above tips and seeking urgent care services can help improve these numbers and keep your child from danger.