The aim of this study was to gain deeper understandings of nurse–patient relationships in the New Public Management era, by exploring beliefs and practices of nurses and patients in Norwegian public home care.

Organization of Norwegian home care services is based on New Public Management‐ideologies, which have led to a rigidly formalized and task‐oriented nursing practice that may jeopardize individual nursing care. Nurse–patient relationships have several positive effects on patients’ health and well‐being, but organizational boundaries and time pressure affect the quality of relationships.

Focused ethnography.

Data were collected between November 2015–July 2016 using participant observation and semi‐structured interviews with 10 nurses and eight patients in six different home care areas, in two Norwegian municipalities. Data analysis was based on Roper and Shapiras framework.

Findings demonstrate the continued importance of nurse–patient relationships in contemporary home care, while identifying extensive variations in the degree of closeness and emotional involvement. Organizational boundaries, time constraints, high workload, and disharmony between nurses “competence and patients” complex illnesses, influence practice in ways that reduce the significance of nurse–patient relationships and affect conditions under which they develop and evolve. Facing a system nurses perceive to function suboptimal, they govern practices based on their own professional assessments, and findings indicate cultural patterns in the way both nurses and patients prioritize to safeguard nurse–patient relationships.

Home care cultures based on traditional nursing values continue, despite New Public Management influences, but a transition into New Public Management culture may, over time, influence the quality of nurse–patient relationships and meanings attributed to them.