Introduction: the ethical climate of a space or an organizational culture that not only the ethical dimension of the employees, but will also affect their work efficiency. In health care organization, ethical climate promotion would be changed staff nurses' reaction to ethical tension and the other factors that they resulted to job dissatisfaction and in the end retention to their work.

Aim: The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between ethical climate and nurses' tendency to remain in their work in hospitals which affiliated to Social Security Organization in Golestan province in 2013.

Methods: This was a descriptive - correlational study.  Fields research were hospitals which affiliated to Social Security Organization in Gorgan and Gonbad in Golestan province. By census sampling method (165) nurse were assessed.  Three questionnaires were used for data collection demographic information, ethical climate's Kalen (1988) and tendency to remain with Hanshow's (1985) Anticipated Turnover Scale (ATS).Data analysis by using t-test and linear regression tests and by Spss16.

Results: The ethical climate with mean (93.2 ± 11.2) was at the desired level, and mean of the tendency to remaining on the job (33.7 ± 6.8) was the average level. The statistics test showed that they were different significantly. And also, linear regression test showed that there is direct and meaningful correlation between them. That is with one point increase in ethical climate, tendency to remaining on the job was improved to (0.12) [p=0.008, OR=0.12].

Conclusion: In order to results, nurse managers could be improving the ethical climate of the workplace for decrease intention to turn over staff nurses.