Purpose: This study aimed to understand the empowerment in clinical nurses and to analyze the influences of job characteristics and professionalism on empowerment. Method: Subjects were 386 nurses in 8 general hospitals at G city and Seoul. Data were collected with self-administered questionnaires and analyzed using SAS 8.1 by applying ttest, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficient, and Stepwise multiple regression. Results: Empowerment was $3.58{pm}0.63$ and among the subscale scores meaningfulness $(3.83{pm}0.74)$ was the highest and Impact $(3.23{pm}0.86)$ was the lowest. The level of empowerment was different significantly by age, marital state, education, clinical careers, position, job satisfaction(p<.00). Job characteristic score was $3.60{pm}0.45$ and Professionalism score was $3.65{pm}0.52$. Empowerment was positively correlated with job characteristics and professionalism(r= .63, .81, p<.01). Major factors that affect to empowerment in clinical nurses was professionalism, which had an explanation of 66.9%. Conclusions: The more clinical nurses took the professionalism, the higher nurses perceived empowerment. Therefore, empowerment and professionalism in nurses should be generally screened and other factors should be looked into. And if the specified nursing intervention program which increase their empowerment would be developed, it may contribute to qualify the nursing services.