Aim To understand clinical practice benchmarking from the perspective of nurses working in a large acute NHS trust and to determine whether the nurses perceived that their commitment to Essence of Care led to improvements in care, the factors that influenced their role in the process and the organisational factors that influenced benchmarking.

Method An ethnographic case study approach was adopted.

Findings Six themes emerged from the data. Two organisational issues emerged: leadership and the values and/or culture of the organisation. The findings suggested that the leadership ability of the Essence of Care link nurses and the value placed on this work by the organisation were key to the success of benchmarking.

Conclusion A model for successful implementation of the Essence of Care is proposed based on the findings of this study, which lends itself to testing by other organisations.