OBJECTIVE To get the current situation of healthcare associated infection(HAI) and implement targeted management through analyzing the trends of HAI incidence rate, the distribution of clinical departments, the sites of HAI and the composition of pathogens in a children′s hospital in a five-year period.

METHODS Data on HAI cases were collected from all inpatients in Children′s Hospital of Soochow University from 2019 to 2023 through the real-time monitoring system of XINGLIN Healthcare acquired Infection Surveillance; Cochran-Armitage test was used to check for the significant changes of distribution of HAI cases.

RESULTS A total of 383, 376 hospitalized patients were monitored from 2019 to 2023, of which HAI occurred on 6670 cases and 7209 case-times with an incidence rate of 1.74% and an incidence case rate of 1.88%. The top five departments of HAI incidence rates were cardiac, neonatal, surgical and pediatric intensive care unit and department of hematology. HAI mainly occurred in blood and alimentary system, upper and lower respiratory tract. A total of 2668 strains of pathogenic bacteria were isolated, of which 1346 strains were gram-negative bacteria, 1140 strains were gram-positive bacteria and 182 strains were fungi. The top three gram-negative bacteria were Klebsiella pneumoniae, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa; the top three gram-negative pathogens were Streptococcus, Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis; and the top three fungi were Candida albicans, Candida parapsilosis and Candida tropicalis.

CONCLUSIONS The HAI incidence rate of this hospital steadily declines in the past five years, however the same changes are not observed in the departments with high incidence of HAI. Attention should be paid to the raising bloodstream infections and detection rate of S. epidermidis.