PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to develop the Nurse Presence Scale and to test the reliability and validity of the instrument. METHOD: The subjects verifying the scale's reliability and validity were adult patients being treated in three artificial kidney unit in Pusan and Taegu from August 1 to October 15, 2000. The data was analyzed by the SPSS/WIN 8.0 program. RESULT: A factor analysis and was conducted items that had a factor loading more than .40, and an eigen value more than 1.0 were seleclted. The factor analysis classified a total of seven factors statistically, but the seventh factor was excluded because communality was less than 4%. Therefore, there were six factors, and its communality was 62%. The explanation of domain and factors based on the conceptual framework and item content are as follows: The first factor was 'interaction' in emotional areas, the second domain was 'empathy' in cognitive areas, the third was 'attention' in emotional areas, the fourth was 'openness' in emotional areas, the fifth was 'sensitivity' in behavioral areas, and the sixth was 'physical assist' in behavioral areas. Cronbach's alpa coefficient to test reliability of the scale was .9766 for a total 49 items. CONCLUSION: The Scale for Nurse Presence developed in the study was identified as a tool with a high degree of reliability and validity. Therefore, this scale can be effectively utilized for the evaluation of nurse presence in clinical settings.