Ready for Winter Weather?

Here's your guide for a safe and healthy winter.

By Mary Parks Lamb, M.D. Medical Director Lakeside Primary Care www.lakesideprimarycare.net With winter just around the corner, here are some tips to help keep you and your family safe and healthy. Falls are common in the winter months as ice and snow frequently cover our sidewalks, streets and steps. Should you or a loved one experience a fall, first assess the area that hurts. Remove any obscuring clothing. Check for lacerations or scrapes that could be bleeding, and if they are present, apply pressure and elevate. If the wounds are deep and the bleeding cannot be controlled, seek medical attention right away. For a non-bleeding wound, follow the principles of "RICE" therapy - rest, ice, elevation, compression. Rest the injured area. …

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Women's Health Rx

What IS Urgent Care?

You've heard about them—and maybe even visited one. Here's a guide to what maladies need what kind of care.

You have seen signs and billboards, read advertisements and watched commercials for urgent care centers, and maybe you have even tried one out to make sure your child’s last sore throat wasn’t strep. But you are not quite sure exactly what urgent care centers can do. When should you choose to go to an urgent care center versus going to the emergency room? What are the advantages of going to an urgent care center? Urgent care centers provide acute medical treatment for minor illnesses and injuries. Often, the waiting time to see a provider and obtain the care you need is much shorter than it is in an emergency room. Urgent care centers offer walk-in service without an appointment and usually have extended hours. Most are open into the …

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Women's Health Rx

Welcome to Women's Health Rx!

Washington Hospital doctors say hello—and give you the skinny on what this column is all about (you).

Welcome to the first installment of Women’s Health Rx, a weekly look into what’s important in women’s health care. I’m Mary Parks Lamb, and I’m currently the medical director at the Urgent Care Center affiliated with The Washington Hospital, located at Krebs Center in McMurray. In August I will be opening a new primary care practice, Lakeside Primary Care Center, in Waterdam Plaza in the Prudential Real Estate office. I’ve been a family medicine physician for 14 years—I completed my residency at UPMC St. Margaret—and I’ve worked 10 years in primary care and four in urgent care. I love being a family medicine physician because of the variety—it's always refreshing and challenging—and I’m able to build relationships with patients across the …

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