A great post 40&80
You are right - in todays regulated medicine as Gingernut alludes to, care is reasonably standardised and 'bad' docotrs and nurses are rare. Mistakes can happen, but the main determinator for whether a patient thinks a doctor is good or not (and vice versa) is communication. Unfortunately for us doctors patients vary in their preferences. I can send 2 patients to the same consultant - one will say the doctor was arrogant / uncaring / cold and the other will say he was authoratative and didnt waste their time talking about social matters.
Interestingly, when I read your consultant's comment about the GP I took the opposite view - he was saying he liked and knew the GP and she was kind; there you go.
But back on theme - statins. In fact there is evidence statins continue to be protective for months - much longer than they remain in the bloodstream. Aspirin will reduce platelet stickiness and prevent clots for at least 10 days. So whilst they are prescribed daily, missing the odd dose is not critical.
In fact very little in medicine is - clotbusters in heart attacks reduce the long term disability and death rate in the population, and paramedic services may reduce the death rate in a very small percentage of patients, but we rarely 'save lives' - we reduce pain, treat symptoms, hopefully put some cancers into remission and overall improve your statistics so you are on the planet with a reasonable quality of life for longer. Doctors who claim they save lives somehow rile me.