OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to assess adult patients’ satisfaction with inpatient nursing care and associated factors in an Ethiopian referral hospital, Northeast Ethiopia, 2013. METHODS: Institution based quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted among patients admitted in medical, surgical, orthopedics, gynecology and ophthalmology wards of Dessie referral hospital from March 24 – April 30, 2013. All admitted patients who stayed in the study wards for at least two days during the data collection time were interviewed. The data collection technique was structured interview by using standard questionnaire adapted from Newcastle Satisfaction with Nursing Scale. Data were entered into EPI-Info version 3.5.3 and exported to SPSS version 20 for analysis. Multiple Logistic regression and odds ratio with their 95% confidence interval were used to identify factors associated with patient satisfaction with nursing care and control confounding effect. RESULTS: The overall patient satisfaction rate was 52.5 %. Respondents’ sex (AOR= 2.20, 95%CI:1.30,3.73), age (AOR=4.77, 95%CI:1.97,11.55), admission ward (AOR= 9.99, 95%CI:3.47,28.79), self reported health status (AOR=2.07, 95%CI:1.27,3.37) and class of admission (AOR=2.56, 95%CI:1.41,4.67) were the variables significantly associated with patient satisfaction with nursing care. CONCLUSIONS: