Nursing homes face increasing challenges due to workforce shortages, ageing populations, and rising care demands. This paper explores the dynamics of human-robot interaction (HRI) in nursing home environments, focusing on how autonomous robots engage with nurses and residents in nursing homes. We examine the role of trust-building and emotional engagement in caregiving scenarios, where patient well-being depends on effective HRI. The potential for autonomous systems to support decision-making while maintaining human oversight is investigated. Using the Autonomy Levels for Unmanned Systems (ALFUS) framework, we assess care robots’ autonomy in terms of mission complexity (MC), environmental complexity (EC), and external system independence (ESI). Additionally, the Autonomy and Technology Readiness Assessment (ATRA) method supports gradual capability enhancement, providing a roadmap to higher autonomy while ensuring safety and reliability. Based on this established methodology, we introduce the Nursing Home Interaction Framework (NHIF), a novel conceptual framework defining the roles of actors involved, to connect theoretical insights with real-world applications. This work highlights the significance of human-robot trust in elderly care scenarios and proposes directions for future research on collaborative decision-making in nursing home HRI.