Objective: The study was conducted as a cross-sectional descriptive study to determine the expectations of the family members of the patients in intensive care units from the nurses and the influencing factors. Material and Methods: The study was conducted with a total of 138 relatives that have patients treated in the general intensive care unit of an education and research hospital and reanimation intensive care unit of a university hospital in Istanbul and that were volunteered to participate in the study, between the dates 01.03.2016 and 01.08.2016. To collect the data, the form prepared by the researcher and the "Perception of the Relatives about the Nurse's Role (PRNR)" scale were used. All of the patient relatives whose patients treated in the intensive care unit at the specified dates were included in the study's universe, and its sample consisted of adult relatives of the patients who stayed at least 48 hours in intensive care unit, who were open to communication and volunteered to participate in the study. The ethics committee was granted permission and verbal approval was obtained from the patients' relatives. In analyzing the data, descriptive statistical methods, and Kruskal-Wallis Mann Whity U test and Sperman correlation from parametric and nonparametric tests were used. Significance level was accepted as p <0.05 within 95% confidence interval. Results: The average age of the patient's relatives was 42.87±13.62, considerable majority (40.0%) of them were the wife/husband of the patient, 72.9% of them were in the intensive care unit for 2-7 days, 79.7% of them believe that his/her patient has received adequate support/care from the nurses, 91.3% of them is generally satisfied with the care of his / her patient, and 87.0% of them believe that his / her patient will leave the hospital with a recovery. When the scale scores were assessed, "visitors should leave the room before the treatment and nursing procedures such as changing the bed, changing the dressing or changing the tubing" received the highest score (84.87±0.449). Conclusion: Most intensive care patient relatives are satisfied with nursing care and high expectation. Educational status, proximity to the patient, duration of the patient’s stay in intensive care unit, consciousness state of the patient and duration of the visit by the relatives were found to be effective factors in the expectation of the patients’ relatives. In line with these results, it can be suggested that the characteristics of patients and their relatives should be taken into consideration in planning of nursing care services.