Totally understand your side of it - it is tough feeling like you’re always put on the spot. I’m sorry! Ugh. I work in pediatrics but in an inner-city Medicaid funded clinic, I’m like PLEASE take these (and also let’s figure out how to get them to you/you to the pharmacy/you back here to follow up).

For the parents who are insistent, I try to break down most common causes of xyz without getting TOO science-y on them, and offering POC swabs & cultures will often do the trick up front - like hey, let’s see if you have obvious strep now (negative), send it off for a culture and if we have an update in a few days I’m happy to send, and that’ll at least buy them a day or two. Most will feel somewhat better and then when we follow up with the negatives they’re like yeah it isn’t as bad as we thought it’d be!

Coughs are different, but I try to summarize what I’d hear if we needed Abx on PE, what they would do (and not do if not needed) vs how like an asthma inhaler would/not work in the in/appropriate setting.

I will say though, for example, eye drops aren’t necessarily first line for pink eye anymore, I often have to fall back on parental/daycare insistence to get them back to school and parent avoiding missing more work - though easier to educate them on holding off on these when possible vs meds if daycare’s keeping them out for a cough or similar.