The purpose of this research was to clarify the relationship between nurses’ career anchor and recognition behavior from head nurse as well as to obtain some suggestions in order to support nurses’ career development. A questionnaire was provided to 760 nurses in A prefecture, using the “self-diagnostic questionnaire for career anchor” by Sakaguchi and the “scale for recognition behavior from head nurse” by Hagimoto. The analysis of 180 out of 188 responses, whose collection rate was 24.7% shows the following results: first, the score of “security and stability” for the six career anchor was highest and the scores for other career anchor were low. Secondly, the scores of all four factors of recognition behavior from head nurse were high. Thirdly, no correlation was found between the score by career anchor and recognition behavior from head nurse. The results suggest that head nurses should be attuned to each nurse, recognize and support his/her needs for career path, rather than supervise him/her according to the type of career anchor.