Background <p>China’s healthcare system faces critical challenges with medical staff experiencing dual pressures of insufficient income and poor health status. Despite extensive research on professional values guiding ethical practice in healthcare, their economic benefits and impact on healthcare workers’ self-rated health remain significantly underexplored.</p> Objectives <p>To examine how professional values influence income and health outcomes among Chinese healthcare workers, addressing potential endogeneity through instrumental variable approaches and exploring heterogeneity across different demographic and professional subgroups.</p> Methods <p>A multi-center survey was conducted from October 2022 to March 2023 across 25 regional secondary and tertiary healthcare hospitals in China, involving 4,267 healthcare workers. An ordinal logit model was used for baseline analysis, with two-stage least-squares instrumental variable regression addressing potential endogeneity.</p> Results <p>.Professional values significantly increased both income (β=1.349, p&lt;0.01) and health status (β=4.939, p&lt;0.01). Each unit increase in professional values increased the probability of high income by 19.0% and healthy status by 77.5%, while decreasing the probability of lower income and health categories. Instrumental variable analysis confirmed these relationships were causal rather than reverse caused. Heterogeneity analysis revealed stronger effects for men versus women, highly educated versus less educated, and permanent versus contract employees. Among professional value dimensions, altruistic values showed the strongest association with both income (β=0.075) and health (β=0.248).</p> Conclusions <p>Professional values significantly influence both economic wellbeing and health status of healthcare workers in China, with differential effects across value dimensions, demographic characteristics, and professional roles.</p> Clinical trial number <p>Not applicable.</p>