Our Clinic

We return telephone calls from our patients for non-emergency problems during our routine office hours. A trained pediatric nurse returns patient phone calls during this time.

When you call our office, be specific about the problem or question that you desire to have addressed. In discussing your child’s health problem with either our nurse or physician, the following information is helpful:

• length of illness
• main symptoms
• medications with dose currently being taken
• medication allergies
• significant past and current medical problems
• your child’s weight and age
• your child’s temperature, if they have a fever (see section on fever in this book)
• the phone number of a pharmacy that is open.

In calling our office for advice, please be aware that as a general rule, we do not practice medicine by telephone without a proper evaluation. We find that many parents expect us to come to a diagnosis and prescribe treatment for their child over the phone, based on information we receive during the phone conversation. The most common requests we get for this involve colds, ear aches, sore throats, fever, and rashes. Because coming to a correct diagnosis not only involves obtaining historical facts about the illness, but also performing a physical examination and sometimes obtaining laboratory tests and X-rays, it is impossible to gather all the necessary information by telephone to obtain a correct diagnosis. To treat a child without a correct diagnosis is dangerous for your child. Because of this, we do not treat children based on information obtained from phone calls alone. For instance, we do not generally prescribe antibiotics over the phone. For these reasons, if your child is ill and needs medical treatment, there is no need to speak with our physician or nurse by telephone. You should make an appointment directly with the receptionist.

If you have an emergency during office hours, tell the receptionist this. She will notify the nurse or physician. We do want you to know what constitutes an emergency. Problems such as severe breathing difficulty, poisonings, seizures, unconsciousness, uncontrolled bleeding, bone fractures and other like problems which pose an immediate threat to life and limb, are all emergencies. Emergencies such as these require immediate treatment. You may want to come directly to the office, go to the emergency room or call 911 should these happen. Problems such as fever and vomiting, while being medical problems which are concerning, are usually not emergencies, but are problems which are covered on this website as to what to do to manage them.

Telephone calls made to our office after our regular office hours should be limited to emergency and urgent medical problems which cannot wait until the office is open. If your child becomes ill after hours, you should consult the appropriate section this website prior to calling for advice. Instructions on how to handle the most common pediatric illnesses are covered here. If you still have questions or if the information on the website directs you to call, then place a call to our after-hours telephone number:  501-663-8400, The Pulaski County Medical Exchange. After-hours calls are first answered by our answering service. The calls are then referred to a trained, pediatric nurse who will call you back. The nurse will advise you on how to manage your child’s problem. If after a reasonable amount of time, we have not called you back (1-2 hours), you should call our answering service to determine the cause for the delay. If you have an emergency which requires immediate assistance, take your child to the nearest emergency room or call 911.