Objective To develop Nurse-Patient Relationship Scale in China (NPRS-C) from nurses′ perspective,and to test its reliability and validity. Methods Guided by the Human Caring Theory, the scale items were developed by literature and expert panel. The scale was first tested with a sample of 472 nurses respectively using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), then was validated with 10-member expert panel and empirically examined with a sample of 379 nurses. Results The NPRS-C has 9 items with two dimensions, "nurse-patient trust" and "patient-centered nursing". All indicators of the scale had a satisfactory goodness-of-fit and good structural validity. The scale-level content validity index (S-CVI) was 0.900. The NPRS-C′s internal consistency with Cronbach′ s α of 0.873, 0.900 and 0.883 for the overall scale, nurse-patient trust and patient-centered nursing dimension respectively. Conclusion The NPRS-C has satisfactory reliability and validity, which can be used to measure nurse-patient relationship in China from nurse′ s perspective.