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epistemological assumption is that the study’s findings were created as it proceeded (Guba & Lincoln, 1994) by ‘understanding how practices and meanings are formed and informed by the language and tacit norms shared by humans working towards some shared goal’ (Orlikowski & Baroudi, 1991, p. 14). An “interpretivist” paradigm stresses the need to situate analysis in context (Reeves & Hedberg, 2003). The researcher by adopting the interpretive paradigm was concerned with understanding both the world (of delivering remote mental healthcare) and the subjective experiences of individuals (remote generalist nurses). The researcher considered meaning (versus measurement) oriented methodologies, such as interviewing and participant observation; relying on a subjective relationship between the researcher and participants. Interpretive research has no predefined dependent and independent variables, but focuses on the full complexity of human sense making as the ‘situation’ emerges (Kaplan & Maxwell, 1994), by aiming to explain the subjective reasons and meanings that lie behind social action. Further explanation and justification for adopting a case study methodology, consistent with an interpretive paradigm, is outlined in section 4.4.2. 4.4 History of Case Study Design The term ‘case study’ is not new, and has been adopted in a number of disciplines, such as medicine, social work, education and anthropology (Merriam, 2009). Around the 1900s, a ‘first generation’ of case studies emerged from the discipline of anthropology, used in the investigation of cultures via field studies (Evans-Pritchard, 1940; Haddon et al., 1901; Malinowski, 1913, 1922; Rivers et al., 1901). Shortly thereafter, another source of case study methodology evolved through descriptions of individuals in medicine, social work and psychology, often called ‘case work’ or ‘case history’ (Johansson, 2003). The