In recent years, there has been growing interest in examining the relationship between personality characteristics and nursing service. Nurses' personality characteristics affect nursing quality and contribute toward success in the fi eld of nursing, but little is known about excellent nurses' personality characteristics that promote the quality of nursing care. The purpose of this study was to identify excellent nurses' personality characteristics through comparison and examination of the characteristics between excellent and average nurses. A cross-sectional survey research was conducted with the 16PF. Data were collected from three hospitals in the People's Republic of China. The participants were comprised of a total of 159 excellent (N = 78) and average (N = 81) qualifi ed nurses. Excellent nurses possess higher social boldness, openness to change, self-reliance, perfectionism, and lower dominance, vigilance, shrewdness than average nurses. The study revealed the personality profi le of excellent nurses. Nurses may be selected, employed and trained according to the personality characteristics of excellent nurses. Thus nursing strategies should be developed and adjusted to get the right person in the right job the fi rst time.