The study aims to determine the thoughts, feelings and attitudes of nurses towards organisational change in hospitals, and the effects of organisational cynicism, job satisfaction, organisational commitment and work alienation on nurses' attitudes towards change.Changes and employees' thoughts, attitudes and behaviours can be mutually affected in the process of transformation.The descriptive, correlative and cross-sectional study was conducted with 1,000 nurses in 52 public hospitals in Turkey.Of the nurses, 59% explained that their workload had increased, and 57% experienced uncertainty and confusion due to the organisational changes in the hospitals. Nurses' total scale scores were 2.86 ± 0.65 for attitude towards change, 2.98 ± 0.52 for work alienation, 2.97 ± 0.84 for organisational cynicism, 2.98 ± 0.70 for job satisfaction and 2.74 ± 0.92 for organisational commitment. Organisational cynicism had a significant effect on the attitude towards change of nurses (R2 = 0.486; F = 235.528; p < .001).The nurses had a moderate level of attitude towards change, organisational cynicism, job satisfaction, organisational commitment and work alienation. The primary influence on their attitude against change was their cynical thinking.The findings of the study can be used to test strategies to reduce cynicism regarding effective management of change.