Background and aim Psychological stress has been an important factor affecting nurses’ health and work performance. However, the assessments of psychological stress have been mainly on the psychological symptoms, but not addressing the workplace exposure to stressors. We developed Nurses occupational stressor scales (NOSS) to quantify the stressors associated with nursing work.

Methods NOSS was developed by interviewing 20 registered nurses who reported having potential working stressors from work. A group of experts in nursing, public health, and occupational health selected 47 questions by using Delphi methods. A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted using these 47 questions. These questions were later screened by factor analysis, etc. After these processes, 25 questions related to nurses’ working conditions remained important and relevant, including five factors, namely, “Hazards from working environment”, “Work-life conflict”, “Overload”, “Shortage of manpower”, and “Workplace justice”. In 2014–6, a questionnaire survey was carried out in representative 3,786 nurses in medical institutions in Taiwan.

Results A total of 3,222 questionnaires were satisfactorily completed by female nurses and were included for final analysis. The mean age of the participants was 31.5 years, and the average work tenure was 10.1 years. Results indicated that stressors of NOSS, including hazards from working environment, work-life conflict, overload, shortage of manpower, and work justice were able to predict high personal burnout, high client-related burnout, self-perceived job stress, job dissatisfaction and intention to leave nursing job.

Conclusion We conclude that using the approach of examining workplace stressor, NOSS is a good instrument for predicting nurses’ burnout, stress, job dissatisfaction, and intention to leave nursing job.