BACKGROUND Clinical education is an indispensible part of the nursing education. Clinical nurses play an important role in this teaching learning process. The quality and quantity of student-nurse interactions in the clinical area can either facilitate or hamper students' learning. The rationale of this research was to probe into staff nurses' attitudes toward nursing students within the context of clinical education in Iran. The nursing literature seems wanting in issues related to staff nurses' attitudes toward nursing students. Thus, we draw on Peplau's interpersonal relations in nursing to address staff-student relationship. That is, the nursing student was taken as the client. METHODS A descriptive cross-sectional design was selected for this study. The entire staff nurses of Medical and Surgical units (n=82) employed at Dr Fatemi and Imam Khomeini hospitals of Ardabil medical sciences university were selected. Stagg's questionnaire and a demographic tool were used to gather data. Attitudes were measured using a five-point Likert scale. Attitudes of staff nurses were inspected using cross tabulations and frequencies. RESULTS The results demonstrated that attitude scores toward nursing students were low and moderate. Some nurses (45.71%) believed that working with students is pleasant and most (98.57%) have thought that staff should have a good relationship with nursing students. Furthermore, staff nurses pointed out that the there is a need to overhaul the educational system of nursing students (94.3%), that nursing students do not acquire the sufficient clinical skill (67.14%), and that the students are not prepared enough for the clinical task (51.43%). CONCLUSIONS According to the results of the staffs' feelings on the relationship between nurse and student, it seems that nurses should cultivate an atmosphere which ends to empathy, assurance and sincerity of nursing students.