Pediatric Emergency Rooms

In any emergency, you want to get the best care for your kids, fast. At Children's Hospital Colorado, our pediatric emergency rooms can handle any urgent healthcare need. Here, your child or teen will be seen by a pediatric emergency medicine doctor or healthcare provider who is specially trained to care for kids. Our pediatric expertise helps your child get diagnosed and treated faster, so they can feel better sooner and get back to being a kid.

Children's Colorado emergency room locations

Children's Colorado offers pediatric emergency rooms at the following hospitals in the Denver metro area and southern Colorado:

• Children's Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora
• Children's Colorado North Campus, Broomfield
• Children's Colorado South Campus, Highlands Ranch
• Children's Colorado, Colorado Springs

Conditions, illnesses and injuries we treat in the ER

Emergency departments, often called emergency rooms or the ER, can treat minor conditions, but also deal with serious injuries and illnesses. Emergency rooms are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Commonly treated emergency conditions in kids include:

• Severe asthma attack, with trouble breathing after treatment
• Head injuries with vomiting or changes in behavior or alertness
• Severe stomach pain
• Seizures that won't stop
• Severe cuts or skin injury with excessive bleeding
• Severe allergic reactions
• Broken bones, with bone coming out of the skin or deformity
• Fevers in infants under 8 weeks old
• Numbness, paralysis, weakness or vision loss
• Object stuck in skin or eye (note: don’t pull it out)
• Swallowed button battery
• Mental health crisis
• Suicide attempt

This list is not comprehensive. If at any point you believe your child needs immediate emergency care, take them to the closest emergency department or call 911.

Why choose a Children's Colorado emergency room

Children are not small adults. They are incredibly different and deserve incredibly different care. Our emergency medicine doctors have at least three additional years of pediatric training than healthcare providers at adult emergency departments and are uniquely qualified to care for kids.  

Here are some benefits of choosing a pediatric emergency room for your child:  

• Pediatric doctors and healthcare providers can help kids, parents and caregivers feel at ease in an emergency situation and throughout their hospital stay.
• Our care team is familiar with common and not-so-common conditions in kids, as well as the unique ways that children respond to medical tests, prescription drugs and treatments.
• Our pediatric emergency rooms have specialized equipment designed to fit children and teens, such as child-sized needles and blood pressure cuffs.
• If your child needs an X-ray, CT scan or MRI, our pediatric imaging specialists can use different techniques to get a complete and accurate image, while using the least amount of radiation.
• Our emergency room doctors will contact your child's primary care provider about your hospital visit. This means that your child’s record will be up-to-date and accurate, and that their doctor will have their test results and know about any procedures that were performed.

Should you go to the emergency room or urgent care?

It can be tough to decide between urgent and emergency care for your kid. If you're in doubt, call your primary care doctor first. If you don’t have a primary care doctor or they’re not available, call our ParentSmart Healthline to speak with an experienced pediatric nurse 24/7.  Call 720-777-0123 to speak with a nurse now.