Objective To explore the applicability of Chinese version of Professional Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL) for measuring the compassion fatigue of Chinese clinical nurses. Methods The Chinese version of ProQOL for nurses was prepared through the translation, back translation, cross-cultural adaptation, and preliminary test of the English version of ProQOL. Then 374 clinical nurses were surveyed by the questionnaire for evaluating the construct validity, internal consistency, and splithalf coefficient of the Chinese version of ProQOL. Results The Chinese version of ProQOL for nurses consisted of 28 items. Cronbach's alpha values of three subscales, i.e. compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress, were 0.875, 0.722, and 0.786 and split-half coefficients were 0.856, 0.636, and 0.765. The exploratory factor analysis extracted one common factor from each sub-scale, which accounted for 47.35%, 31.81%, and 38.20% of the variance, respectively. Conclusion The Chinese version of ProQOL for nurses exhibits satisfactory reliability and validity and is suitable for the evaluation of compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue of Chinese clinical nurses.