They said they are overworked, exhausted, and are expecting nurses to drop out of the profession after experiencing pandemic conditions in a "chronically understaffed" working environment.

NSW Nurses and Midwives Association councillor and South East Regional Hospital branch delegate, Di Lang said that although care was being delivered to patients, it was only on the goodwill of nurses constantly picking up extra shifts and double shifts.

"Nurses are managing the care fine, but it's only because of the goodwill of these nurses doing the extra shifts and reducing patient numbers in other areas of the hospitals to support it."

Ms Lang said there had been a specific ward opened up for COVID patients at SERH, but opening specialised wards meant that nurses would have to be deployed from other departments to cover the extra work.

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"We're feeling huge pressure because we're trying to open up a new specialised ward and yet reduce the numbers in a different ward, we're trying to make sure we have enough staff to cover everything with what we had before which wasn't enough," she said.

"The government has continually ignored what nurses have said in that we need ratios and we needed them five years ago. That's had a direct impact on how care is being delivered at the moment.

Ms Lang said it was not the fault of their local management as it remained a state-wide issue.

"The government has continued to ignore the professionals, continued to manipulate the system to make it look like they've got more people on, but they don't and nurses across the board are exhausted, exactly like they are at Bega Hospital.

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"We were exhausted long before this particular pandemic has hit us personally and now we're just trying to stretch the ball game so that we can cover the wards as needed."

She said the only reason SERH had continued to operate was due to deploying nurses from other departments to cover shifts. They only had to work one staff member down to realise just how broken the system was.

"Nurses have managed through this pandemic, but I bet you afterwards that we will lose so many because of the exhaustion, they'll just go why? Why would I put myself through that ever again?

"We're already losing nurses across the board, we're finding that people don't want to put themselves through the mental anguish of working in a COVID-positive ward or getting to the end of their working life and they want something a little bit easier."

Nurses have been praised throughout the pandemic for working on the frontlines and putting themselves at risk of contracting COVID to continue caring for their patients.

"They can pat you on the back, but when they don't listen to you, when they ignore the professionals - the ones working on the floor - and they continue to ignore us, nurses are feeling disillusioned, unappreciated," said Ms Lang.

"Words are easy to say, actions speak a lot louder and their actions do not show respect to nurses," she said.

The NSWNMA has been fighting for better ratios for nurses for over a decade and said that although the government has said it had hired additional nurses, the nurses on the ground were not seeing the increase nor that their workload had been lightened.

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"I don't see any new nurses on the floor, we've got the same number if not less. Our numbers on the ward have not changed since I started nursing 12 years ago," said Ms Lang.

Ms Lang said an improvement to ratios would see easier retainment of nurses well past working under pandemic conditions and would make recruiting less difficult.

"If we had those numbers, there would have been more nurses in the pool so to speak to fall back on when we had to ramp up and do these extra things."

Recruitment was also much harder in a regional areas due to accommodation shortages and increased staff shortages in those areas compared to metropolitan areas.

"When this is all over people are going to say 'never again', but we've got to live through this one first and we've got to deliver the care that's required in the safest possible manner.

"But we need to make sure the public are aware of how dire it is and that this situation is not because of the COVID pandemic, it's because of the lack of support the Ministry of Health has done over the last few years," said Ms Lang.

The Australian Government Department of Health has been contacted for comment and the BDN will bring readers its response once received.