Colorectal cancer is one of the leading types of cancer around the world in terms of morbidity and mortality. Determining an individual’s risks and providing appropriate counseling are important in reducing colorectal cancer mortality and morbidity rates. Individual colorectal cancer risk counseling is conducted to raise awareness about the disease, provide information, encourage and follow up on early diagnostic testing. This process is supervised by adequately trained public health nurses in primary healthcare and by oncology nurses in secondary healthcare centers. The colorectal cancer risk counseling process involves implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Establishing well-implemented counseling programs will contribute to preventing colorectal cancer and keeping the illness under control. The purpose of this review is to provide nurses information about colorectal cancer risk counseling.