Objective  To assess the status of organizational justice, turnover intention and work performance among village doctors, and to analyze the effects of organizational justice on turnover intention and work performance.

  Methods  A total of 1 018 village doctors in 6 cities of Shandong province were surveyed from October to November 2015. Descriptive method and factor analysis were used in data analyses and structural equation model was adopted to verify the hypothesis.

  Results  The organizational justice includes two dimensions: distributive and procedural justice and work performance includes three dimensions: task performance, interpersonal promotion, and work dedication. Distributive and procedural justice exerted a negative impact directly on turnover intention (influence coefficient: – 0.214 and – 0.189); distributive justice exerted a positive impact indirectly on task performance, interpersonal promotion and work dedication (influence coefficient: 0.030, 0.028 and 0.031). The total effect of procedural justice is 0.162 (0.136 and 0.026 for direct and indirect effect) on task performance and 0.227 (0.202 and 0.025 for direct and indirect effect) on interpersonal promotion; the indirect effect of procedural justice is 0.028 on work dedication.

  Conclusion  The study demonstrates that distributive justice and procedural justice have significant direct positive effect on turnover intention; the procedural justice has a direct positive impact on work performance; the distribution justice has a positive impact on work performance through turnover intention as a mediating variable. The results suggest that improving organizational justice and procedural justice could reduce turnover intention and improve work performance among rural doctors.