Objective To investigate the positive practice environments ( PPE ) of nurses and influencing factors at public hospitals , for reference of building a better PPE .Methods A national cross-sectional survey was performed at 77 public hospitals across seven provinces/metropolises, involving 5374 nurses.PPE included organizational management (internal) and nurses-patient relationship (external). Results The scoring of positive practice environment was 18.51 ±4.69 (total score of 40).The scoring of organizational management and nurses-patient relationship was 9.87 ±3.11 and 8.64 ±2.51 respectively. The scoring of PPE of nurses of general hospital ( GH) was higher than that of traditional Chinese medicine hospital(TCMH) (18.68 ±4.68 versus 18.08 ±4.67, P<0.01).Multivariable analysis showed that , compared with nurses who had not very much pressure about performance assessment , the scores of those who had were declined (βGH =-1.15, 95％CI: -1.55 to -0.76;βTCMH =-1.29, 95％CI: -1.92 to-0.66 ) );compared with nurses who paid less efforts in communicating with their patients , the scoring of those with greater efforts was higher (βGH =2.43, 95％CI:2.00 to 2.86;βTCMH =2.84, 95％CI:2.19 to 3.49).Conclusions PPE of nurses is poor in general in China , and the externally stressful nurse-patient relationship deserves greater attention and efforts than inefficient organization management internally .To improve PPE of nurses , hospitals need to moderate nurses′performance assessment and the nurses need to pay more attention to patient communication .