An instrument that evaluated patient attitudes toward nurses and nursing care in a primary care setting is described. The tool consists of 25 items, subdivided into three subscales--1) technical-professional area, 2) interpersonal educational relationship, and 3) interpersonal trusting relationship--to which respondents indicate agreement to disagreement in five Likert-type steps. Items, developed from interviews with patients, literature review, and other similar scales, were submitted to two sequential trials and to application of criteria such as variability, representativeness of content definition, ability to discriminate between respondents, and internal consistency. Respondents for the two sequential trials were 78 and 60 patients of internists or general practitioners at a group health cooperative. Scott's homogeneity ratios and reliability coefficients as measured by Cronbach's alpha were obtained for the subscale and the total scale, and subscale intercorrelation coefficients were determined, but further testing of the scale for validity is needed.