Exhausted, outraged, and anxious - all words local nurses have used to describe their feelings about current hospital working conditions.
Driven by these desire for change, the New South Wales Nursing Midwifery Association (NSWNMA) held a protest outside Blue Mountains District Anzac Memorial Hospital in Katoomba on February 22.
Nurses finished their morning shifts and gathered at 3.30pm to voice concerns over "unsafe staffing" and to advocate for better ratios of nurses-to-patients in the Emergency Department.
David Robson, NSWNMA member speaking on behalf of his branch, said a ratio of 1:3 nurses-to-patients would allow for gold standard care.
"An example of that would have been a triage nurse the other week that had a ratio of one nurse to twenty two patients," Mr Robson told the Gazette.
He feels current ratios are much worse than this target, and may be risking patient safety as nurses are spread thin.
"We really have no staff so we dread it, every day we get to work. If one person's called in sick we're screwed," he said.
"We just need the public to be aware of the dangerous environment they're walking into when they come to ED [emergency department]."
Other members attending the protest voiced their strong feelings for current working conditions.
"I'm exhausted, as are all of my colleagues," said NSWNMA member Nick Tribbia.
"We've been through now three years of the pandemic, which has put a burden on our health system and on the nurses that provide care, beyond anything we've seen in our lifetimes. We need a fix."
NSWNMA member Tanya Walker said "our staff work really, really hard and do their best, but... they can only really do as much as they can. They're a fantastic team."
NSWNMA member David Corden said that if a 1:3 nurse-to-patient ratio were implemented in ED with a dedicated resuscitation and triage nurse, the hospital's staffing profile "would close to double".
Despite all of the above, Mr Robson said the demonstration was not an attack on the hospital.
"It is purely to create community awareness of the danger they place themselves in when entering the department due to a lack of ratios," he said.
In May 2022, Premier Dominic Perrottet said there were already mandated ratios for nursing hours per patient.
"The form of nurse-to-patient ratios that the union are advocating for actually creates more problems in the health system," he said.
"When nurses are sick under that ratio, wards have to close."
In September 2022, NSW Labor leader Chris Minns promised to recruit 1,200 new nurses and midwives if Labor wins the upcoming state election.
