In this paper, the corruptions in the university affiliated hospital are known. The cognition of the administrative staff on the psychological roots of corruption and construction of clean government culture are also discussed, which provides therotical foundation to optimize the construction fo the clean government culure in hospital. Methods A random investigation is carried out among 510 administrative staffs from 7 university affiliated hospitals in Nanjing. These respondents were required to complete the self-designed questionnaires. The contents of the questionnaires mainly include three parts: the cognition on the reasons cause corruption, the cognition on the psychological roots of corruption and the approaches for optimizting the construction of clean government culture. The approaches of descriptive analysis and Chi-Square analysis are used to study the cognitive differences of the administrative staffs in the psychological inducement of corruption, the weak supervision of discipline inspection department, imperfect system and the influence of socity culture. Results There is a statistically significant difference (P < 0. 05) in the cognition on the current corruption situation in hospital obtained from the questionnaires of the staffs with different professional titles and in various positions. The rest three questions show no statistically significant differences (P >. 05), which indicates that the relevant cognition of administrative staff is generally in consistent. Conclusion administrative staffs in hospital have relatively unified cognition the psychological roots of corruption, which, on one hand, reflectes that more efforts are required on prevention and control of corruption in hospitals and, on the other hand, clearly proposes optimal countermeasures for the construction of clean government culture.