"Sign Here": Nursing Value and the Process of Informed Consent.

Protecting patient autonomy is a key nursing role. The Code of Ethics (American Nurses Association, 2010), contextualizes the nurse's call to advocacy within the doctrine of informed consent. This article offers a primer on the legal, ethical, and practical aspects of procedural informed consent and examines the value of nursing's role within the process. The theory of nursing's value is sound, but the literature lacks data. Higher levels of evidence are necessary to make sound decisions about best practice for the process of informed consent. As such, this article concludes that adding nursing research to the current discourse should prove most valuable to patients, providers, and the nursing profession as a whole.