Background: Psychological capital is a new subject that emphasizes on capabilities and assets of an individual. It also considers the positive aspects of human life and tries to facilitate presence of these positive elements in human life from a scientific and practical view. Given the increasing approach to the psychological capital in organizations, the present article aimed to investigate the effect of psychological capital on burnout of nurses in a military hospital in Tehran.

Materials and methods: In a descriptive survey, a total of 150 nurses who were working in a military hospital in 2015 were selected based on simple random sampling method. Luthans psychological capital questionnaire and Maslach Burnout questionnaire were used for data collection. The data of the research were analyzed by SPSS software using descriptive and inferential statistics.

Results: The findings showed that self-efficiency, hopefulness, and tolerability were effective factors on the burnout. The standardized beta coefficients for hopefulness (0.526) and self-efficiency (0.357) had the highest and lowest effect in the change of burnout, respectively.

Conclusion: According to findings, psychological capital can be an appropriate solution to reduce the burnout.. Due to importance of this subject, the officials of organizations should have more knowledge about importance and role of psychological capital in order to decrease burnout.