Effectiveness of a comprehensive nursing prevention and control system for respiratory infections in fever clinics in the era of co-existence of multiple pathogens

Objective To construct a comprehensive nursing prevention and control system for fever clinics that is suitable for an environment in which multiple pathogens coexist, to evaluate its effectiveness in preventing nosocomial cross-infection and to provide a preventable and controllable model that can be promoted in similar medical institutions. Methods A retrospective cohort study was conducted involving 37,475 patients who attended the fever clinic of a tertiary hospital between January 2022 and March 2025. A total of 18,155 patients, treated between January 2022 and February 2023, were assigned to the control group, whereas 19,320 patients, treated between March 2023 and March 2025, were assigned to the observation group. The control group received routine nursing care, whereas the observation group received the comprehensive nursing prevention and control system proposed in this study, with “accurate identification, process optimisation, environmental and personnel protection and patient education” as its core components. Outcome measures included patient improvement before and after implementation of the comprehensive nursing prevention and control system, anxiety and depression scores, patient satisfaction and patients' mastery of educational content. Results No cases of nosocomial infection were identified among patients, medical staff or accompanying persons before or after implementation of the comprehensive nursing prevention and control system. However, compared with the control group, the proportions of patients with multiple visits and those with aggravated conditions were both reduced in the observation group. In contrast, the number of patients with improved symptoms and the number of cases with consistent diagnoses increased significantly. Regarding scores on the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and the Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), the observation group had lower scores (SAS: 32.50 ± 8.32; SDS: 31.03 ± 10.77) than the control group (SAS: 39.20 ± 4.15; SDS: 42.60 ± 8.95; P < 0.005). With respect to patient satisfaction, the score in the observation group was 99.13 ± 1.46, compared with 91.13 ± 1.46 in the control group ( P < 0.005). Regarding patients' mastery of the educational content, the total mastery rates in the control group and observation group were 11,699 (64.44%) and 17,638 (91.29%), respectively ( P < 0.005). Conclusion The comprehensive nursing prevention and control system constructed based on the reality of co-existence of multiple pathogens effectively prevents nosocomial cross-infection, significantly improves the nursing quality of fever clinics and patient satisfaction and provides a feasible and practical model and theoretical basis for infection prevention and control in medical institutions in the post-pandemic era.