Objective To explore the correlation between compassion fatigue and career success among emergency nurses and the mediating role of rumination between them. Methods From October 2017 to February 2018, we selected 138 emergency nurses in Emergency Department from four ClassⅢ Grade A hospitals in Zhejiang Province as subjects by convenience sampling. All of them were investigated with the general information questionnaire, the Chinese Version of Compassion Fatigue Short Scale (C-CF-Short Scale) , Nolen-Hoeksema Ruminative Responses Scale (RRS) , Career Success Scale (CSS) . Pearson correlation was used to analyze the correlation. The Amos 17.0 was used to the mediating effect of structural equation model. A total of 138 questionnaires were sent out in this study and 133 valid questionnaires were collected. Results Among 133 emergency nurses, the total scores of C-CF-short scale, RRS and CSS were (61.03±16.18) , (47.23±10.12) and (31.87±6.82) respectively. The compassion fatigue of emergency nurses had a positive correlation with the rumination (r=0.48, P<0.01) and had a negative correlation with the career success (r=-0.37, P<0.01) . The rumination of emergency nurses was negatively correlated with the career success (r=-0.44, P<0.01) . Rumination had a partial mediating role between compassion fatigue and career success with 0.16 for the mediating effect accounting for 44.4% of the total effect. Conclusions Nursing managers should timely recognize the compassion fatigue of emergency nurses and take coping strategy to positively relieve their negative emotions and rumination so as to improve their career success. Key words: Nurses; Emergency service, hospital; Compassion fatigue; Rumination; Career success