RESUMO
Annual checkups are one of the ways for getting healthy lifestyle, but it seems that most people are not aware of them or they don't want to do them. Since nurses are most responsible for teaching, coordinating and supporting this matter and because researches have shown that women are more worried about their health status, therefore it was decided to investigate the knowledge and practice of female nurses relating to annual checkups. In this descriptive research, knowledge and practice of 402 female nurses who worked at some Esfahan hospitals with researcher prepared questionnaire and checklist were investigated and findings by SPSS [ver=15] software and descriptive, correlative statistics, ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney-U tests were analyzed. Findings of this research showed that 69.4% of female nurses had poor knowledge, 27.1% had moderate knowledge and 3.5% had good knowledge and 41.5% of them had poor practice, 40.0% had moderate practice and 18.5% had good practice relating to annual checkups and there were significant correlation between age- work background and practice but there were no significant correlation between, age- work background and knowledge of samples [P<0.05]. Knowledge and practice of most nurses relating to annual checkups is poor and because this group must be one of the main educators, coordinators and supporters of this matter, therefore the annual teaching must be considered for them and for improving the practice of these checkups, useful ways should be introduced