Home health care nurses' perceptions of physician-nurse relationships

This work is a sociological analysis of the physician-nurse relationship in home health care. Data include observation, interview, and survey sources. Results confirm that, largely because of the physician's distance both physically and symbolically, home care nurses take on a more primary care role with patients than do nurses in hospitals. There are fewer instances of conflict between physician and nurse in this setting, as doctors yield more responsibility to nurses than they may in hospitals. In the end, though nurses claim higher levels of autonomy, patients appear to be the true beneficiaries of the in situ shift in nursing responsibility.