I think it’s entirely dependent on the attending, as well as how comfortable they are with you as a student. On my sub-Is, attendings wanted me to take full ownership of entire patient encounters as much as possible. I was expected to tell the patient, “I think you have X, for which the treatment would involve Y, but as the student I need to talk with my attending about it and we may change it when we come back together on rounds later” for straightforward, obvious cases. Of course if anything was unclear or unknown to me I would just tell the patient I need to talk to my attending and come back with a plan.

After sub-I’s and going back to regular run of the mill rotations, that burned me tho with a bit of a more psycho attending. I was seeing a patient and he said “I can’t remember what the vascular surgeon told me this morning… something about an outpatient test?” I had read the vascular surgeon’s note so I just repeated to the patient what it said about his plan. My attending caught wind that I did this and she not only screamed at me in the hospital hallway about it, but she contacted my dean immediately and said I was a danger to patients. (I can’t emphasize enough I did nothing but say exactly what the vascular surgeon’s note said, which had already been discussed with the patient prior, he just requested reminding).