Objective To investigate the current status of nursing interns' needlestick injuries, and explore effective countermeasures against occupational exposure. Methods Occurrence of needlestick injuries among nursing interns in a hospital from 2016 to 2018 was investigated retrospectively. Before clinical internship, nursing students registered the basic data uniformly, received training on infection prevention and control knowledge, and were informed that they should report to the real-time healthcare-associated infection surveillance management blue-dra-gonfly system after the occurrence of needlestick injuries, relevant data of needlestick injuries were exported and analyzed through the blue-dragonfly system. Results A total of 2 099 nursing students were investigated, 256 were male students and 1 843 were female students; 1 117 were junior college students and 921 were undergraduate students, 34 were domestic master students and 27 were foreign master students. There were 232 cases of needlestick injuries, incidence was 11.05%. There were significant differences in the incidence of needlestick injuries among nursing students of different genders, education background, internship stage and department (all P<0.05). In terms of distribution of manipulation links, 28.88%, 21.55%, and 18.10% of needlestick injuries occurred during separation of needles, pulling out of needles, and recapping of needles respectively. In the distribution of exposure sources, HBV and syphilis TP accounted for 21.12% and 6.90% respectively. In the distribution of exposure locations, 32.33% of needlestick injuries occurred in the wards. Conclusion Incidence of needlestick injuries is lower among nursing students, but higher in the female interns, those with lower education, the first stage of internship, separation of needles, and recapping of needles, it is necessary to strengthen standardized trai-ning on safe injection and develop individual training programs.