Introduction : Diabetes, being the most common chronic metabolic disease, is one of the greatest challenges of the twenty fist century. Metabolic disorders of diabetes mellitus cause pathological disorders in numerous organs which can bring about various problems for diabetic patients and community’s health system. Nurses, as the largest diabetes treatment group should have comprehensible knowledge of diabetes.

  Methodology : In this cross-sectional study, 267 hospital nurses, working in hospitals affiliated to Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, were selected through stratified random sampling. Using a self-regulated questionnaire, the nurses’ knowledge was evaluated and classified into three levels, i.e., low, moderate and good. SPSS, version 16 was used for performing t-test, one-way ANOVA and chi-square on the obtained data.

  Results : The obtained results showed that 4.1%, 86.9% and 9% of nurses had low, moderate and good knowledge about diabetes, respectively. The level of knowledge was not correlated with gender, marital status and position of the nurses.

  Conclusion : The results demonstrated that the majority of nurses had a moderate amount of knowledge. Therefore, to promote awareness of medical staff, holding continuous training courses seems to be necessary.