People often wonder what the difference between hospitals and clinics is. Both have doctors, both are devoted to treating patients and both have the facilities of medical assistance. So what is the difference? Why the need to specify the difference when you go to a clinic instead of a hospital? There are many who don’t know the reason to this.
The truth is that a hospital is much greater than a clinic, in the sense of the facilities and the way of treatment. A hospital can be though of as a medical institution which is devoted to the treatment of people and for correcting their ailments. They have a large capacity to take in-patients and can also have other specialized units within it, like mother and care, emergency unit, etc.
A clinic, on the other hand, is a smaller version of the hospital. They too have facilities for treating their patients but in a much limited way. A clinic is a medical institution which is smaller than the hospital, in sense of the in-patients intake and the number of facilities available. They are usually limited in their specialization areas and take less risky cases. A clinic usually takes only out patients, the cases of taking in an in-patient are very less, and that too would be done if the case is of a low risk type.
Else, the patient would be referred to a hospital. The clinics too may have all the facilities of the hospital, and sometime it would be more comfortable and easy to go to a clinic than a hospital as the atmosphere is much friendlier. A hospital takes in the highly risky and threatening cases and treats them. So now that you know the difference between a hospital and a clinic you can decide which one to go to in case you have some ailment.