It's only natural for patients to be anxious about surgery, but this nervousness can spawn miscommunication, which can snowball into adverse events as minor as poor post-op pain control and as major as wrong-site surgery. While nobody's saying you must calm a patient before surgery, you are legally required to communicate effectively with him. The process is called informed consent, and attempting to document, in compliance with state and federal requirements, everything each patient he needs to know before his procedure can be burdensome.