Advanced Medical Clinic

Why You Should See a Family Medicine Provider for Your Chronic Pain

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that chronic pain afflicts roughly 50 million adults in the United States. If you’re a statistic, one of your best bets to keep chronic pain from wreaking havoc on your mental health and interfering with your overall quality of life is to work with your family medicine provider.

Read on to learn about the specific measures your family medicine provider can employ to help you tackle your chronic pain.

Devising a Care Plan for Your Chronic Pain

Chronic pain has various potential causes. It could be caused by arthritis, fibromyalgia (a condition that causes widespread body pain), an untreated musculoskeletal injury, multiple sclerosis, or any other health problem.

Your family medicine provider can get to the bottom of your chronic pain by reviewing your symptoms, medical history, and current health status as well as ordering the necessary tests (e.g., blood work, diagnostic imaging, etc.).

If your family medicine provider deems that you need advanced treatment, they will coordinate your care with a specialist, such as a neurologist, pain management specialist, or orthopedic provider, to determine the most effective intervention for your problem. Depending on the underlying cause, your care team may recommend surgery or ongoing treatment.

Recommending Additional Strategies for Chronic Pain

Your family medicine provider may recommend any or some of the following strategies to enhance the efficacy of your care plan:

  • Exercise program – Exercise can have a positive impact on both your mood and pain threshold. It is also especially beneficial if your chronic pain is caused by arthritis, as it helps increase your mobility by reducing joint inflammation and stiffness.
  • Relaxation techniques (e.g., breathing exercises, mindfulness meditation, etc.) – These have been shown to help with chronic pain by stimulating the production of the body’s natural painkillers (endorphins).
  • Joining support groups – This equips you with emotional support as well as useful information about your specific condition.
  • Smoking cessation program (supervised by your family medicine provider or another healthcare provider) – Studies show that smoking is linked to many health problems that cause chronic pain.
  • Behavior therapy/ professional talk therapy – Your family medicine provider may recommend either or both of these modalities to help improve your coping strategies.
  • Nutritional recommendations – Your family medicine provider may recommend a diet plan that includes anti-inflammatory foods, which can help with chronic pain.

Treatment for Chronic Pain in Wellington and Royal Palm Beach, FL

At Advanced Medical Clinic, our board-certified internist Dr. Ishan Gunawardene and our board-certified family nurse practitioner Shariffa Gunawardene are best known for their commitment to delivering the best possible treatment outcomes for the gamut of conditions—including those that cause chronic pain—affecting people of all ages. We will gladly collaborate with the right specialist to help you live well with or even conquer your pain.

To arrange a consultation with one of our providers, contact us at (561) 434-1935 or request an appointment by filling out this secure form.

When to visit a walk-in clinic vs. emergency room

Sometimes, you just need immediate medical treatment for a non-life-threatening condition. Whether it’s a cough, cold, fever, eye or ear infection, insect bite, or skin allergies, non-life-threatening is not necessarily non-life-affecting. These conditions can prevent you from going about your day normally and resting.

There are healthcare care facilities in Wellington, Florida, that have extended hours and are open on weekends where you can receive prompt medical care without having to make an appointment. They are called walk-in clinics, and they serve your medical needs for non-life-threatening illnesses and injuries.

Walk-In Clinic vs. Emergency Room

You may be wondering, “How about the emergency room?” When primary care providers’ clinics are closed, there is the option of the emergency room. If you have visited the emergency room for a medical condition that is considered a non-emergency, chances are, you had to wait a long time to be seen, or you were asked to wait to see your primary care provider during regular hours.

Triage nurses in emergency rooms will assess your condition and determine its severity. Patients with conditions that are considered non-emergencies tend to have longer waits. Moreover, emergency room visits are expensive. You could receive treatment for a wound and be billed a shockingly high amount, which is largely the facility fee. All in all, it is better to save emergency room visits for true emergencies.

When to Visit an ER:

You should visit an ER when you have severe, life-threatening symptoms. Examples include:

  • High fever
  • Choking
  • Breathing issues
  • Passing out or fainting
  • Head and neck injuries
  • Complex fractures (there is evidence of deformity or bone pushing through the skin)
  • Severe pain anywhere in the body
  • Serious burns
  • Deep wounds
  • Severe bleeding
  • Severe allergic reaction; anaphylaxis
  • Numbness, weakness, or drooping on one side of the body

These are symptoms of life-threatening illnesses and injuries, suggesting a medical emergency, and should be treated in an emergency care facility.

When to Visit a Walk-In Clinic:

A wide range of non-life-threatening conditions can be treated at a walk-in clinic. Examples include:

  • Headaches
  • Sinus infections
  • Eye infection
  • Ear infections
  • Colds and flu
  • Strep throat
  • Sore throat
  • Tonsillitis
  • Fever
  • Insect bites
  • Mild skin allergy reaction or rashes
  • Small cuts, blisters, or wounds
  • Mild sprains and fractures
  • Diarrhea
  • Vomiting
  • Abdominal pain

A walk-in clinic can also provide other services, such as DOT physicals, women’s health exams, such as Pap smears, as well as vaccinations and immunizations.

Wellington Walk-In Clinic

The decision to visit a walk-in clinic can save you time and money. Patients are advised to find out ahead of time their options for care to be better prepared. If you are seeking urgent care for your medical condition, visit the Advanced Medical clinic in Wellington. We are a primary care clinic providing walk-in care. Unlike other Wellington walk-in clinics, at Advanced Medical, you will receive care from expert primary care providers.

The Advanced Medical clinic is located in the Palomino Park complex on Hwy 44. We also have a location in Royal Palm Beach, at 1236 Royal Palm Beach Blvd. If you have any questions, give us a call at (561) 434-1935. We look forward to providing for your urgent medical needs!

Most Common Injuries You Can Have Treated At A Walk-In Clinic

A walk-in clinic is a place you can go to receive urgent treatment for a non-life-threatening injury. This facility is built for your convenience and is open for longer hours with the ability to receive patients with little or no wait time and without an appointment.

You know all too well that small accidents can happen at night or on weekends, which can mean a trip to the emergency room, or it could mean waiting until you can see a primary care provider for it. Common injuries are not a priority in the ER. Plus, it’s expensive getting treated there for common injuries. Whereas waiting to see a primary care provider may not give you peace of mind, and the symptoms can be overwhelming.

It pays to know your options for the next time you or a family member sustains an injury or medical emergency that is not life-threatening. Find out what common injuries can be treated at a walk-in clinic.

Injuries Treated at a Walk-in Clinic

Walk-in clinics vary in the services they provide. A walk-in clinic providing quality urgent care services should be able to treat patients with the following injuries:

  • Cuts and lacerations – open wounds can be cleaned and stitched shut to prevent infection and to assist with healing.
  • Sprains and strains – severe sprains and strains need stabilization and the use of bandages and splints.
  • Splinters – removal of foreign objects to prevent damage from infection and internal damage.
  • Fractures – fractures need to be immobilized with a brace, cast, or splint to encourage proper healing of the injury and to reduce pain and swelling.
  • Dislocations – a dislocated shoulder can be manipulated back into place and immobilized for the healing process to begin.
  • Burns – first-degree burns, where the skin is red but not blistering, can be cleaned and treated in a walk-in clinic. Burn ointment can be applied to prevent infection and provide relief from pain.
  • Car accident injuries such as cuts, scrapes, bruises, and whiplash – the providers at a walk-in clinic can provide prompt evaluation following a car accident and determine the seriousness of the injury. A cervical collar may be used to enhance the healing of a whiplash injury.

Walk-in clinics are an excellent resource for patients needing urgent treatment for common injuries. To get the highest quality treatment for injuries, choose one with board-certified medical professionals on the team.

Royal Palm Beach and Wellington Walk-in Clinic

At Advanced Medical, our health care providers include a board-certified internal medicine provider, Dr. Ishan Gunawardene, and board-certified nurse practitioner, Dr. Shariffa Gunawardene. We are a healthcare team composed of caring and compassionate professionals offering patient-centric care.

If you’ve sustained an injury, we can provide a quick diagnosis and treatment to begin your recovery. We have many on-site conveniences and can provide continuity of care. Each patient’s treatment is personalized and will be overseen by Dr. Gunawardene.

If you have any questions or to let us know that you are coming, call (561) 434-1935 or request an appointment online. We look forward to serving you in our Wellington walk-in clinic.

Tips on How to Recover From Whiplash

Whiplash is a neck injury that usually results from a car accident. It develops when the neck is forcefully moved back and forth, like a whip. However, you can get whiplash from other activities, too, such as sports.

Fortunately, most cases of whiplash can be addressed using conservative methods, like medication and exercise. Here are some tips to speed up your recovery.

Rest

Just like any other injury, rest can relieve whiplash symptoms. A few days of bed rest can help you recover. However, excessive lack of movement may delay recovery. The structures in your neck can weaken due to prolonged immobilization. Your provider will give you advice on how long you should rest and any movement restrictions to follow.

Use Neck Support

Your provider may advise you to wear a neck foam or brace to relieve pain and promote healing. A brace or a collar could help reduce the pressure on your neck by holding it still.

Most experts say that you shouldn’t wear neck support for more than 72 hours. The duration will depend on several factors, including the severity of your injury. Your provider will give instructions on how long you should wear the brace and when to take it off.

Apply Hot/Cold Packs

Apply a hot or cold compress to reduce muscle swelling and pain. You may do this every 3 hours for 15 minutes. If you’re using ice packs, wrap the ice in a cloth first. Avoid direct application to avoid damage to the skin.

Take Medication

Your provider may recommend medication to relieve painful symptoms. For mild to moderate whiplash pain, you can try over-the-counter medications, like ibuprofen and Tylenol. If you have more severe symptoms, you may require prescription medication. If needed, your provider may prescribe antidepressants to relieve nerve pain. For your safety and health, it’s best to consult with your provider before taking any medications.

Your provider may also prescribe muscle relaxants. These medications force tight muscles to relax to provide pain relief. However, muscle relaxants can induce drowsiness. Your provider may also recommend injection treatments. This ensures targeted delivery of the medicine into the painful muscle areas.

Stay Active

Rest can help in the first few days following your injury, but you will need to be active to complete your recovery. Being inactive for too long can be detrimental. Muscle stiffness and decreased physical strength are typical problems for those who have sustained an injury and remained at rest for a significant time. To combat this, your provider will likely incorporate light exercises or physical therapy into your treatment plan.

Physical therapy aims to improve range of motion and rebuild strength. Here are some of the exercises your provider may recommend:

●      Rotating your neck clockwise/counterclockwise

●      Tilting your neck to the left and right

●      Shoulder rolling

●      Bending your head towards and away from your chest

Treatment For Whiplash Wellington, FL

Most cases of mild whiplash can be resolved with over-the-counter medication and home care. However, severe cases may result in chronic pain and other prolonged complications. If you are suffering from whiplash due to an accident or physical trauma, see a provider immediately.

If you would like to seek help for whiplash in Wellington, look no further than the Advanced Medical Clinic. We are a primary care practice committed to delivering personalized healthcare treatment to patients of all ages. Our team crafts appropriate treatment plans for urgent and non-urgent conditions.

Let us know you’re coming! Call us at (561) 434-1935 or fill out our online appointment request form.

What Are the Benefits of Choosing a Walk-In Clinic?

You’ve been feeling under the weather for days now. You’ve finally decided to see a family care provider, but it’s the weekend or already past business hours. You may be tempted to just sleep it off, but why wait any longer when you can get seen right away?

Your best bet is to visit us at Advanced Medical. We accommodate walk-in patients as part of our commitment to providing comprehensive and convenient healthcare services to the residents of Wellington, Royal Palm Beach, and the surrounding areas.

So, before you go to a regular walk-in clinic or make that long and expensive trip to the emergency room, check out the benefits of choosing to visit us instead for your non-emergency medical needs.

We Are Not Your Run-of-the-Mill Walk-In Clinic

What sets us apart from those walk-in clinics you typically see in grocery stores, pharmacies, and “big box” stores is that we are run by highly qualified medical professionals—a board-certified internist and a board-certified family nurse practitioner. This means that you are in very good hands.

We combine our expertise with advanced evidence-based medical care to deliver the best patient experience and treatment outcomes. Compassion, empathy, and respect are the cornerstones of our practice.

You Are a Top Priority

Emergency rooms can get overcrowded. As such, patients with non-emergency cases often don’t receive prompt care and have to sit in the waiting area for hours on end.

At Advanced Medical, you are a top priority, and we don’t just treat you like a number—we treat you like a family. We will provide you with the personalized care that you need, when you need it.

We Provide High-Quality and Affordable Services in Wellington, FL

Since we are essentially a primary care practice, you can trust us to help you with the vast variety of medical conditions, both acute and chronic.

We see patients of all ages, and we offer a comprehensive range of preventive and urgent care services—all at friendly rates.

These include:

o   Allergies and asthma

o   Auto accident and workplace injuries

o   Chronic conditions (e.g., cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, and type 1 and type 2 diabetes)

o   DOT physicals

o   Physicals for sports, school, camp, employment, and insurance

o   Respiratory tract infections (e.g., common cold, the flu, tonsilitis, etc.)

o   Weight management

o   Women’s healthcare services (e.g., gynecologic exams, Pap smears, and preventive medicine)

Are you sick today? Be seen today at either our Palm Beach or Wellington Walk-in Clinic! If you prefer to set a same-day appointment, you can either call us at (561) 434-1935, or you may fill out our appointment request form.

How Do I Find the Right Family Medicine Provider for Me?

Having a family medicine provider, as research shows, is linked to better health outcomes. But there’s one other great reason to have a family medicine provider, and that is the provider-patient relationship you can rely on for your and your family’s healthcare needs over the long term.

If you don’t have a family medicine provider or are not at ease with whom you’re currently seeing, now is the time to find a new one—one you can see yourself establishing a lifelong relationship with. Don’t wait till you or a family member gets ill. Pressure and illness can cause you to make a hasty, uninformed decision.

Here are some simple tips to help you streamline your search for the right family medicine provider for you.

  • Gather several recommendations.

The first step in finding the best family medicine provider is to get lots of referrals.

Ask your family, relatives, friends, and colleagues. Word-of-mouth recommendations are inherently reliable, as they come from people you personally know and trust.

You can also get referrals from other medical practitioners. Talk to your dentist or therapist. They possibly work with general practitioners, so they are in a position to recommend a family medicine provider who fits your family’s needs.

  • Do an internet search.

The World Wide Web is replete with resources that can help you find the right family medicine provider for you.  You can find information about the practice’s business hours and the provider’s credentials on their website.

Additionally, the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) website has a helpful database that allows you to verify the practitioner’s board certification status, the number of years they have spent in practice, and whether they have any medical malpractice history. 

  • Check their location.

Distance is one important factor that many tend to overlook. Twenty miles may only seem like a quick ride, but if you need to take time off work to drive there, then it can be inconvenient.

There are big advantages to having a family medicine provider whose office is located close to where you live or work. This lessens the burden of having to travel far and ensures you have fewer hindrances to showing up for your appointments.

  • Read reviews.

In this day and age, it is very easy to find out about a medical practitioner’s reputation. Online reviews, though not necessarily a deciding factor, can help you make an informed decision with greater confidence.

You can find the answers to your own questions about the attitude of the family medicine provider or the staff, quality of services, and wait times by reading reviews, which you can find either on the practice’s website and/or social media page.    

  • Schedule a visit.

This is a great way to ascertain the family medicine provider’s bedside manner and communication style, both of which have a huge impact on your confidence in their care and expertise as well as your overall experience.

Talk to the family medicine providers you have on your list and observe whether they have a soothing bedside manner and communicate effectively.

Are they able to explain complex medical concepts? Do they answer all your questions politely? Do you feel comfortable talking to them? If you answer no to any of these questions, it might be a sign that they may not be the right one for you.

Family Medicine Provider in Wellington, FL

If you’re searching for the right family medicine provider in the Wellington area in Florida, visit us at Advanced Medical Clinic for a consultation with our board-certified nurse practitioner, Shariffa Gunawardene. She is as equipped to provide you and your family with the highest quality of primary care services— the very same one you get from a family medicine provider in Wellington.

Call us at (561) 434-1935 to set an appointment with our highly qualified family medicine provider. You can also use our convenient online request form.

Should You Visit a Walk-In Clinic?

A walk-in clinic is a healthcare facility where you can receive medical care without an appointment. These medical offices are also often called urgent care centers.

Think of a walk-in clinic as an ultra-convenient family medicine provider’s office. It operates as if you could walk right into your family medicine provider’s office without making an appointment beforehand.

Let’s talk about why you would want to visit a walk-in clinic, the differences between these facilities and emergency rooms (ERs), and where you can go in the Wellington and Royal Palm Beach area for convenient, personalized healthcare.

What Is a Walk-In Clinic?

Walk-in clinics have family medicine providers and nurses who can efficiently diagnose and treat non-life-threatening injuries and illnesses, such as a cold, flu, fever, sore throat, sudden pain, infections, and cuts. These healthcare professionals can also administer vaccinations and perform physicals for school, sports, and employment. If you’re going away on a trip and need to get specially vaccinated per your destination (which has been the case long before COVID-19), walk-in clinics also provide this service.

These urgent care clinics can treat patients who have minor allergic reactions, asthma, bronchitis, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. An urgent care center can also provide wellness checks, such as your annual checkup. This type of medical office is a great option for when your primary care family medicine provider is not available.

Is a Walk-In Clinic the Same as an Emergency Room?

If you have a potentially life-threatening issue – such as a severe allergic reaction that is affecting your breathing or a severe traumatic injury, such as a blow to the head or being injured in a car accident – go to an emergency room at a hospital. Do not go to an urgent care or walk-in clinic. Hospitals are equipped with ventilators and other high-level medical technology that is necessary to handle trauma.

An emergency room tends to have a much, much longer wait time than does a walk-in clinic if you have a non-life-threatening health issue. That is because a hospital’s emergency room will conduct triage, which is prioritizing the severity of injuries and illnesses – and the more severe cases will be seen first. Low-level illnesses or injuries may take a long time to be seen by a family medicine provider.

What Is the Difference Between a Walk-In Clinic and an Urgent Care Clinic?

You may be surprised to learn that there is actually no real difference between an urgent care center and a walk-in clinic. People use these terms interchangeably, per their own comfort level, but they both mean that you can go to the clinic or the medical office without an appointment.

Walk-In Clinic in Wellington and Royal Palm Beach, Florida

It is ideal to have a primary care provider whose office also accepts walk-ins for sudden minor emergencies, such as a bad cut or a cold. Here at the Advanced Medical Clinic, we offer primary care and urgent care services to patients of all ages, and we accept walk-ins without an appointment.

Our staff can quickly assess your medical issue and provide treatment, thereby avoiding unnecessary visits to the emergency room. If you have any questions about our urgent care services or would like to schedule an appointment, contact our friendly staff today at the Advanced Medical Clinic by calling us at (561) 434-1935 or by filling out our online request form now. We look forward to being your healthcare partner!

Welcome to Our Blog

Thank you for visiting our blog, and we look forward to connecting with you.

Advanced Medical is excited to bring you the latest information about research and advancements in primary care. This blog will also be used to post updates about our practice and keep in touch with our patients.

Check back often for new blog posts, and please don’t be shy. We welcome your comments and invite you to share this information with your friends and family.

Have a question about our practice or something you’ve seen in the news?

Want to suggest a blog topic?

You can leave a comment here or give us a call at (561) 434-1935, anytime.