Sorry this is a bit of a garbled thread, as the title says, I never know when to take the kids to see the GP or when to treat at home.
My eldest child had chronic ling disease so I've always been told to always speak to one of his team if anything is bothering me or if anything changes, I'm fine with that but I have 3 other children and I never know when I'm wasting time or not. Don't get me wrong I never take them for the slightest cold/cough or anything and I usually don't take them and a coupe of times they've then ended up in hospital 
.
For instance, my DD is 19 months and has a runny nose/glassy eyed viral cold type thing, however she also has spent 3 days with a really high fever (being controlled by calpol and ibuprofen) but as soon as it wear off the temp shoots back to 39+ and she also has the most awful heart cough where she's coughing up a lot of phlegm, she spends long periods of time sleeping and acting a bit dazed but has had periods of normal playing too,
I don't want to waste time seeing a GP if it's a viral thing that she'll shake by herself but equally o don't want her to get worse.
There's so much in the media about time wasters and the NHS being in its knees. We take so much out of it already which I feel bad for (I know I shouldn't but drs often remind me that new treatments for DS are costing hundreds of thousands per year so it's hard not too!)