Telehealth services offer accessible care to distributed populations. However, it is not clear how the important caring intervention of “presence” can be enacted in distributed settings. Information Systems literature theorizes “presence” in distributed work as something to be created by technologies as a precondition for effective work to occur. Following an abductive research process, we compare extant conceptualizations of presence with an empirical case of telenursing. We find that in order to be a caring presence, telenurses must skillfully employ technology while drawing on past embodied experience, in order to balance the “dualities of distance” of nearness and farness; control and freedom. We thus recast presence as a form of skillful work with technology, not as an antecedent to, but a part of telenursing practice. Our model of “the dualities of distance in presencing work” prompts new understandings and offers new directions for future research in both HISR and IS
