Purpose:The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among turnover intention, emotional labor, and communication competence in nurses. Methods: The participants for this study were 297 nurses from three general hospitals in two local cites in Korea. Data were collected by self-administered questionnaires from August 26 to September 10, 2013 and analyzed using descriptive statistics, One-way ANOVA, t-test, Pearson Correlation, Stepwise Multiple Regression with the SPSS/WIN 18.0 program. Results: The average scores for turnover intention, emotional labor, and communication competence respectively, were 3.45, 3.08, and 3.44 out of 5. The novices recognized that their emotional labor and turnover intention were significantly higher, and their communication competence was lower than other nurses. Nurses' turnover intention had a positive relationship with their emotional labor, but no relationship with communication competence. Job satisfaction, frequency of emotional expression, and emotional dissonance had an effect on nurses' turnover intention. Conclusion: The results show that emotional labor and job satisfaction are very important factors affecting nurses' turnover intention. So, nurse managers should try to minimize nurses' emotional labor and maximize their job satisfaction by developing various human relationship educational and support programs and using them.