This paper examines aspects of nursing care provided in Australian private hospitals from a patient perspective. An exploratory study was conducted within Queensland to determine those aspects of customer ‪service that patients require from nursing staff in private hospitals. The study was conducted on a random sample of 51 members of the general public who were interviewed as previous patients of the private health care sector. The results of the study provide an excellent indication of the variables that patients require of nursing staff in a private hospital environment, and their relative importance to patients as measures of customer service quality. Four aspects of patient service were explored, namely, performance of the patient service task, personal aspects, ancillary aspects, and communication performance. Overall, it was found that technical service performance was rated more highly than functional service performance items. The results have provided the information necessary to construct future questionnaires, using multi-attribute measures, of patients' detailed evaluations of patient/nursing service encounters.