Kids & Teens: Pediatrician, Specialist, or Urgent Care?

• Repeat ear infections
• Fever in an infant under 3 months
• Wheezing, night cough, or suspected asthma
• Attention, learning, or behavior concerns at school
• Skin rashes and eczema flares
• Sports physicals and injury clearance

Which specialists to see

• Pediatrics

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  The medical home for every child — well visits, vaccines, and first evaluation of nearly everything.

• Ear, Nose & Throat (ENT)

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  Recurrent ear infections, tonsils, sleep-disordered breathing, and hearing concerns.

• Allergy & Immunology

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  Asthma, food allergy testing, and eczema that keeps returning.

• Psychiatry

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  ADHD, anxiety, and mood evaluation when school and home strategies are not enough.

When urgent care is the wrong choice

Any fever in an infant under 3 months is an emergency department visit, not urgent care. So is difficulty breathing, dehydration with no wet diapers for 8 hours, a seizure, or a head injury with vomiting. Everything else — ear pain, mild fevers in older children, rashes, minor sprains — is handled faster and cheaper by the pediatrician's same-day slot.

Referrals worth asking for

Three or more ear infections in six months, or four in a year, meets the usual threshold for an ENT referral. Night cough that wakes a child more than twice a month suggests uncontrolled asthma and deserves an allergy or pulmonology opinion. For ADHD, ask whether the pediatrician does full rating-scale evaluations; many do, and it avoids a months-long psychiatry waitlist.

Keeping one record, not five

Ask every specialist to send notes back to the pediatrician. A single medical home that sees all results catches patterns — growth changes, repeated antibiotics, medication interactions — that scattered visits miss.

Frequently asked questions