Aim: We examined Korean nurses professional quality of life, emotional labour and workplace violence to guide development of interventions to improve nurses professional quality of life. Background: Nurses face heavy exposure to emotional labour and workplace violence. Stress experienced by nurses reduces compassion satisfaction and increases compassion fatigue. Methods: Participants comprised 399 clinical nurses chosen by convenience sampling. Questionnaires measured demographic characteristics, emotional labour, workplace violence and professional quality of life. Results: Nurses professional quality of life was affected by emotional labour and workplace violence. Graduate educational level, emotional exposure and emotional supervision were associated with compassion satisfaction. Burnout was commonly associated with emotional exposure, experience and supervision of workplace violence. Secondary traumatic stress was associated with emotional exposure and experience of workplace violence. Conclusions: We elucidated the relationship between professional quality of life, emotional labour and workplace violence. Raising professional quality of life among nurses requires regular analysis of emotional labour and provision of organizational‐level interventions. Counselling programmes that address violence prevention education and comprehensive response strategies among nurses and policies that foster an organizational culture of respect and cooperation in hospitals are needed. SUMMARY STATEMENT: What is already known about this topic? Promoting nurses professional quality of life is important in managing the quality of nursing care.Nurses with exposure to emotional labour show negative health effects, reduced willingness and ability to work, frequent absences, dissatisfaction and turnoverWorkplace violence negatively affects professional quality of life among clinical nurses. What is already known about this topic? Compassion satisfaction was highly related to organizational management systems for emotional labour and workplace violence.Burnout was associated with the magnitude of exposure to emotional labour and experience of workplace violence and negative organizational management systems for workplace violence.Secondary traumatic stress was associated with the magnitude of exposure to emotional labour and experience of workplace violence. The implications of this paper: To increase nurses professional quality of life, organizational management systems that address and reduce emotional labour and workplace violence are critical.It is necessary to develop programmes that address violence prevention education and comprehensive response strategies regarding emotional labour.Counselling programmes that address violence prevention education and comprehensive response strategies among nurses and policies that foster an organizational culture of respect and cooperation in hospitals are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]