Car accident care
What kind of doctor should you see after a car accident?
It is a fair question, and most people asking it have never had to answer it before. Several kinds of clinician treat accident injuries, and they do genuinely different things.
Call 911 or go to the emergency room if you have any of these
- New or worsening weakness in an arm or leg
- Numbness that is spreading
- Loss of bladder or bowel control
- New difficulty walking or keeping your balance
- Severe or worsening headache, confusion, repeated vomiting, or loss of consciousness
- Chest pain or difficulty breathing
- Severe abdominal, neck, or back pain
- Severe or uncontrolled bleeding
None of these? Read on.
For everything else — neck pain, back pain, stiffness that is not easing, anything running into an arm or a leg, numbness or weakness — the most complete first visit is an orthopedic spine surgeon. That covers most accident injuries.
Not sure which you need? That is a reasonable thing to ask a doctor directly, and it takes about ten minutes.
The doctors you will hear about
Each of these does something real, and they are not interchangeable. Here is what each one is for.
Urgent care
Good for being seen today: an X-ray, treatment for anything visible, and the visit on record. What it cannot do is image a disc, a ligament or a nerve. Those need an MRI, and urgent care almost never has one on site. More about urgent care after a car accident
A chiropractor
Spinal adjustment and manual therapy. Chiropractors are licensed health professionals, and they are not medical doctors: in Georgia they cannot prescribe medication, give injections or perform surgery. Chiropractor after a car accident? What a spine surgeon adds
A physical therapist
Exercise, movement and hands-on treatment to rebuild strength and range of motion — often the right next step once you know what is injured. Physical therapists are not medical doctors and do not prescribe medication or perform surgery.
A pain management physician
A medical doctor focused on relieving pain, usually with medication and injections. Pain management physicians do not perform spine surgery.
A neurologist
For a head injury — confusion, memory trouble, or symptoms that came on after a blow to the head. Headaches on their own are less clear cut: after a collision they often come from the neck, particularly when they sit at the base of the skull and worsen when you turn.
An orthopedic spine surgeon
A medical doctor trained in surgery of the spine, who can take you the whole way: the examination, the imaging decisions, conservative care, injections, and surgery when it is needed. Neck pain, back pain, and pain, numbness or weakness running into an arm or a leg are spine problems — which is most accident injuries.
What each one can do
| Chiropractor | Physical therapist | Pain management | Spine surgeon | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Medical doctor | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Prescribes medication | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Spinal injections | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Spine surgery | No | No | No | Yes |
| From the first exam to surgery if needed | No | No | No | Yes |
Only one column runs the whole way down. That is the practical reason to start with a spine surgeon: whatever the examination finds, there is no handoff to someone you have not met.
It is also why seeing a surgeon does not mean surgery is on the table. Most of what Dr. Jimenez does is establish that an operation is not needed — and being able to say so with confidence is the point of asking a surgeon.
A free consultation with Dr. Jimenez, within 24 hours — five to ten minutes on the phone, and longer if it needs to be.
If a spine specialist is the answer
Dr. Miguel Jimenez is an orthopedic spine surgeon. He completed his orthopedic surgery residency at the Mayo Clinic and a spine fellowship at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, and has practiced in Georgia for more than 23 years.
He does the examination himself, makes the imaging decisions himself, and performs the injections and surgery himself. There is no handoff to someone you have not met, and the person deciding whether you need an operation is the same person who would do it.
Most of what that means in practice is being told you do not need one.
Mayo Clinic orthopedic residency · Hospital for Special Surgery spine fellowship · 23+ years in Georgia · English and Spanish
What “personal injury doctor” means
You will see the phrase a lot while searching, usually alongside “car accident injury doctor” and “accident injury doctor”, and it is worth knowing that none of them is a medical specialty. Nobody trains as a personal injury doctor. The phrase describes a practice that regularly treats people injured in accidents — which can be any of the clinicians above.
So it tells you something useful about what a practice is used to handling, and nothing at all about what it is qualified to do. The question worth asking is the ordinary one: what is this person trained in, and are they the right fit for what I have got?
How to tell which one you need
Start from the symptom rather than from the specialty.
- Neck or back pain, stiff and sore, nothing traveling
- Most of this settles on its own. What makes it worth a conversation anyway is that soft tissue injuries build over the first 24 to 72 hours, so day two is not a reliable picture of day five.
- Pain radiating into an arm, hand, leg or foot
- This suggests a nerve is involved, and it is the point at which a spine specialist is the more useful first call.
- Numbness or tingling anywhere, even coming and going
- Same answer. Worth identifying early rather than late.
- Headaches that started after the crash
- Often coming from the neck. Worth evaluating, and worth mentioning if they arrived with confusion or repeated vomiting.
- The ER already cleared you and you still hurt
- Normal, and not a contradiction. That is what a follow-up evaluation is for.
A free consultation with Dr. Jimenez, within 24 hours — five to ten minutes on the phone, and longer if it needs to be.
What happens after you send a requestSymptoms after an accident, in more detailIf the ER already cleared you
Two things that stop people calling
A referral. You do not need one to be seen here.
An attorney. You do not need one either. Whether to involve one is your decision and it is not a medical one — we would just rather it was not the thing standing between you and having your neck examined. More about how payment works
Tell us what happened
If you are not sure which kind of doctor you need, that is itself a good reason to talk to one. Tell us what happened and what you are feeling, and within 24 hours you can talk it through by phone with Dr. Jimenez — including, if it turns out that way, that someone else is the better fit.
A free consultation with Dr. Jimenez, within 24 hours — five to ten minutes on the phone, and longer if it needs to be.