Objective To explore the impact of head nurses′ empowering behaviors on self-regulatory fatigue of nurses, and to provide reference for alleviating self-regulatory fatigue of nurses.Methods A convenience sample of 845 nurses from 3 hospitals in Chengdu were surveyed using the Nurse Managers′ Empowering Behavioral Scale for Staff Nurses and the Self-regulatory Fatigue Scale.Results The score of head nurses′ empowering behavior was （162.04±8.84） and the score of nurses′ self-regulatory fatigue was （46.80±4.42）.Hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that after controlling for confounders, empowering behavior of head nurses affected nurses′ self-regulatory fatigue （P＜0.05）, accounting for 22.7% of the total variance.Conclusion Both head nurses′ empowering behavior and nurses′ self-regulatory fatigue are at moderate levels.Nursing managers should enhance head nurses′ empowering behaviors to alleviate self-regulatory fatigue of nurses.