Background <p>Traditional didactic teaching methods have been the cornerstone of nursing education, the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) has gained recognition in healthcare education as a student-centered instructional strategy with the potential to enhance critical thinking.</p> Objective <p>This study aims to investigate the effect of PBL on the health education ability of nursing interns in order to promote the development of nursing education.</p> Methods <p>A prospective cohort study was conducted with 142 nursing interns randomly assigned to either a control group (traditional teaching method) or an observation group (PBL teaching method), with 71 individuals in each group. The control group used the traditional teaching mode, and the observation group used the PBL teaching mode for 2 months. The primary outcome measures included assessment scores, health education ability, self-directed learning ability, critical thinking ability, and overall teaching satisfaction.</p> Results <p>The comparison of assessment scores revealed that the PBL Teaching Group demonstrated significantly improved post-test scores compared to the Traditional Teaching Group (<i>P</i> &lt; 0.05). Additionally, the PBL Teaching Group displayed significantly higher post-assessment scores in health education ability (<i>P</i> &lt; 0.05), self-directed learning ability (<i>P</i> &lt; 0.05), and critical thinking ability (<i>P</i> &lt; 0.05). The results show a significant positive correlation between health education skills and self-directed learning (<i>r</i> = 0.478, <i>P</i> &lt; 0.001), significant positive correlation between health education skills and critical thinking (<i>r</i> = 0.854, <i>P</i> &lt; 0.001),significant positive correlation between self-directed learning and critical thinking (<i>r</i> = 0.553, <i>P</i> &lt; 0.001).In addition, the overall satisfaction level of PBL group (28.69 ± 6.28) was significantly higher than that of traditional teaching group (25.14 ± 7.78) (<i>P</i> &lt; 0.05).</p> Conclusion <p>This study provides evidence to support the use of PBL as an effective teaching method to improve the health education ability of nursing interns, and provides new ideas and methods for nursing education.</p> Trial registration <p>Not applicable.</p>