Background: Improving and sustaining the quality of nursing care is an intractable and persistent challenge. The patient experience of nursing care can give a different perspective on nursing quality and help clinical nursing staff to direct quality improvement. Attempts to identify what is patient experience,the relationship with nursing care, and the application of patient experience in nursing quality improvement practice, in order to provide advices for constructing the quality standards and quality improvement strategies of nursing care.Methods: We conducted a literature review of original research publications. The database platforms Pubmed, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI) and Wanfang were searched from inception until end of August 2015. After screening retrieved articles, 40 sources(articles and organizational websites) were selected for analysis for the connotation, development and application of patient experience in nursing quality researches.Results: Our study identified several concepts about patient experience, roughly sorted out the development path of patient experience in worldwide and the application of patient experience in nursing quality improvement. It points out four precautions when applying patient experience in nursing quality improvement, which are differentiating patient satisfaction and patient experience, choosing appropriate data collection method and appropriate feedback time, and the last but the most important, applying theories to actual clinical practice.Conclusions: Professional indexes are important to maintain the care quality, but it cannot fully reflect quality of nursing care, which needs patient experience as the supplement. Nursing staffs need to make more efforts to enhance patient’s nursing care experience, and apply the research results to clinical practice, and finally make patient-centered care come true. For future study, the evaluation system and management strategies about patient experience need to be developed to guide nursing quality improvement. Background: Improving and sustaining the quality of nursing care is an intractable and persistent challenge. The patient experience of nursing care can give a different perspective on nursing quality and help clinical nursing staff to direct quality improvement. Attempts to identify what is patient experience, the relationship with nursing care, and the application of patient experience in nursing quality improvement practice, in order to provide advices for constructing the quality standards and quality improvement strategies of nursing care. Methods: We conducted a literature review of original research publications. The database platforms Pubmed, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and Wanfang were searched from fromception until end of August 2015. After screening retrieved articles, 40 sources (articles and organizational websites) were selected for analysis for the connotation, development and application of patient experience in nursing quality researches.Re Sults: Our study identified several concepts about patient experience, roughly sorted out the development path of patient experience in worldwide and the application of patient experience in nursing quality improvement. It points out four precautions when applying patient experience in nursing quality improvement, which are differentiating patient appropriate and patient experience, choosing appropriate data collection method and appropriate feedback time, and the last but the most important, applying theories to actual clinical practice. Conclusions: Professional indexes are important to maintain the care quality, but it can not be fully reflect quality of nursing care, which needs patient experience as the supplement. Nursing staffs need to make more efforts to enhance patient’s nursing care experience, and apply the research results to clinical practice, and finally make patient-centered care come true. For future study, the evaluation system and management strategies about patient experience need to be developed to guide nursing quality improvement.