Traditional nursing care focuses on helping patients return to a state of “self-care” or as close as possible to it before discharge.9 In this model, nurses tend to concentrate on the performance of individual and sometimes unrelated tasks and spend a great deal of time managing complications as they occur. Patients are often directly and indirectly encouraged to take a dependent role before and after surgery and allow the nurse to “do” for them. When this happens, nurses become caretakers and patients become passive recipients of care. The advent of fast-track surgery challenges nurses who care for patients before, during, and after surgery to question traditional nursing practices and expand this role.