Objective To translate the Communicating Bad News (CBN) Scale into a Chinese version, to test its reliability and validity, and to provide a valid tool to assess Chinese nurses′ competence in breaking bad news to patients. Methods The Brislin model was used to translate the CBN scale into a Chinese version, which was later used to survey a convenience sample of 274 nurses for reliability and validity testing. Results The Chinese version of CBN scale had 6 dimensions (preparation，strategies，empathy，considerations,communication, and perception) and 25 items. The Cronbach′s α coefficient was 0.923 for the overall scale, and between 0.732-0.885 for the dimensions; the test-retest reliability coefficient was 0.886; the content validity index was between 0.890-1.000 for the items, and 0.980 for the overall scale. After exploratory factor analysis, 6 common factors were extracted, and the cumulative variance contribution rate was 70.228%. Conclusion The Chinese version CBN scale has good reliability and validity and is an effective tool for assessing the ability of Chinese nurses to tell bad news.