One of the many duties of perioperative nurses is to make sure cases start on time. No matter how full the day's OR schedule, however, they should never rush the informed consent process. Their good intentions of trying to move cases along places them between surgeons and patients, and puts them and your facility at risk of being sued for failing to provide proper informed consent before procedures.
Informed consent is essentially a social contract between a surgeon and a patient. The surgeon is supposed to have a discussion with the patient about the benefits, risks and alternatives to the procedure so the patient can make an informed decision about whether to go through with the surgery. The conversation is what puts the "informed" in informed consent.
Let's say a pre-op nurse asks a patient to sign the consent form, but the patient says he was online the night before and read that impotence was a potential side effect of the radical prostate surgery he's scheduled to undergo, and wants to know how likely that outcome is for him. The nurse wants to keep the OR workflow going and therefore tells the patient to sign the form and that the surgeon will be in momentarily to answer his questions.
The nurse closes the chart and leaves to care for other patients. Moments later the anesthesiologist walks in and sees the signed form, so he pre-medicates the patient, who is now under the influence of a sedative. The surgeon comes in, and the anesthesiologist informs him that the consent form has been signed and the patient is ready for surgery. The patient is wheeled to the OR and the procedure is performed.
