Objective To systematically evaluate the effect of occupational protection education towards needle stick injuries among nursing students in China. Methods A computerized literature searching was carried out from October 2002 to October 2012 in following databases: PubMed, CNKI, WanFang Data and VIP, so as to collect all controlled studies about the effects of preventing needle stick injuries between students who had occupational protection education and those who had not. Two reviewers independently screened the studies according to the inclusive and exclusive criteria, extracted the data, and assessed the quality. Then RevMan 5.0 software was used for meta-analysis. Results A total of 10 studies involving 2 197 nursing students were included. Ten studies indicated that protection education could reduce the incidence of needle stick injuries by 33%; 3 studies indicated that protection education could increase the awareness rate of protective knowledge by 52%; and 4 studies indicated that protection education could increase the correct treatment rate after injuries by 61%. Conclusion Occupational protection education before internship is effective to prevent needle stick injuries among nursing students. However, because of the limitation of this study, more high quality studies are needed to further confirm its effectiveness and to provide targeted advices for formulating preventive measures.