Background: The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) Intrapartumrnguidelines recommend that vaginal examination (VEs) should not be routinely performed andrnthat women should be â€˜offeredâ€™ a VE every four hours. Research has shown that the performancernof multiple vaginal examinations can be a risk factor for maternal or fetal infection.rnObjectives: To assess the reasons and frequency of vaginal examination by health care providersrnduring normal labour in selected public hospitals of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from April to Mayrn2015rnMethods: Institutional based cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted and the studyrnparticipants were health personnel who attend to labour cases in the selected public hospitals andrnclients with normal labour who consented to participate in the study during the study period werernincluded. Study setting was selected purposively based on its client flow from the total publicrnhospitals in Addis Ababa and convenience sampling technique was used for selecting studyrnparticipants.rnResult: In this study the number of vaginal examination performed for each women ranges fromrnone to seven (mean 2.24, SD 0.67), the majority of them were examined 3-4 times 93 (50.0%)rnduring their labour time. The main reason given by health care providers to conduct vaginalrnexamination was to check the onset of labour and to check progress of labour .Logistic regressionrnanalysis showed that 1-2 health care providers 0.043 times less likely had frequent vaginalrnexamination when compared to 3-7 health care providers with adjusted OR 0.043; 95% CIrn(0.006, 0.330).rnConclusion and recommendation: frequency of vaginal examination is mostly affected byrnnumber of health care providers who conduct VEs and duration of labour. So, vaginalrnexamination should have performed only when it is necessary by following WHO guidelines.rnKeywords: Vaginal examinations; Progress in labour; health care provider; Labour