'bronchitis' posts

When you don’t feel good or you get hurt, it often feels like an emergency. You want the pain and discomfort gone…now! But the emergency room may not be the right place for you. So where do you go?

Think of urgent care as the middle ground between the ER and your primary care doctor's office. In other words, urgent care clinics like the one that just opened at Swedish/Redmond are the perfect spot for those “feels like an emergency but isn’t” moments.

Consider urgent care for:

1. Illness: If you have ...

Patients who are well educated about their medical conditions and who use self-management plans created in collaboration with their doctors have better outcomes in a number of chronic medical conditions. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which includes both chronic bronchitis and emphysema, is no exception. Patients who understand the disease process that causes COPD and who understand their treatment and management plans have fewer emergency room visits, fewer hospitalizations and fewer days with COPD-related symptoms.

If you are one of the 12 million people who know they have COPD, what can you do to have more days without COPD-related symptoms?

First...