The shortage of nurses has become a severe worldwide problem (Li et al., 2020). By the end of 2020, the number of nurses per 1,000 population was 2.97 in China (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2020), which marks a large gap compared with developed countries. However, in a study involving 1,706 nurses in China, Liu et al.(2018) noted that 69.1% of the nurses intended to leave their jobs.In addition, a study on new nurses in Shanghai found that within the first year of practice, nurses' turnover intention was as high as 74.4% (Zhang et al., 2016). According to these studies, turnover intention, defined as the tendency of an employee to leave the current job and to seek other job opportunities, is a critical and effective predictor of turnover (Zhang et al., 2016). Frequent staff turnover reduces organizational performance and can trigger other employees' emotional instability and slack behaviours within the organization (Heavey