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This article analyses the multiple factors that determine the amount of time consecrated by doctors to inform the patients of the diagnostic and therapeutic procedures that should be performed on their body. The analyses I propose are based on  ethnographic research carried out in four hospitals of Turin in northern Italy. The first part of the essay examines the division of time within the hospital, which often appears inadequate to establishing a dialogue with patients. In the second part of the essay, I highlight how a wide range of factors, not always connected with the material restrictions imposed by the patterns of medical work, contributes to managing the time dedicated to the information process. Power relations within the medical staff as well as the social characteristics of the patients influence the information process and, more generally, the quality of doctor-patient interactions. In the third part of the article, I focus on the centrality of doctor-patient encounters in patient information and how patients are increasingly deploying strategies to gather information about their illnesses and therapies on their own.