In the face of swelling community support for nurses who are under intolerable pressure and concerned about the critical impact of the shortages on patient care, the SWAHS agreed to immediately start recruiting to fill vacancies across the AHS.

But the SWAHS promises to fill vacancies quickly fell to disappointment when it was revealed the recruitment plan was woefully inadequate and would be delayed due to initial attempts to recruit internally.

'There are severe staff shortages in all hospitals in SWAHS. It doesn't take a genius to work out SWAHS is not going to recruit staff from an already depleted pool.

'The attempt by SWAHS to advertise positions internally, before advertising externally, is causing at least a month's delay.

'Members are very angry, they are feeling totally let down by the SWAHS. We need urgent, external advertising of all vacancies to happen immediately,' said Judith.

Like many wards and units in public hospitals across SWAHS, Maternity Services at Nepean Hospital is suffering critical staff shortages.

Shirley Hammond, NUM in Maternity Services, said she was utterly dismayed to discover SWAHS was not recruiting according to the unit's profile.

Thirty-six positions, mainly at Nepean Hospital, Auburn Hospital, Blue Mountains District ANZAC Memorial Hospital and Westmead Hospital, were lost as the SWAHS had made offers of redundancy and accepted them prior to consultation with the NSWNA.

Following the directive that no frontline positions were to be made redundant, the SWAHS withdrew 62 frontline clinical positions from their list.

'What on earth was the SWAHS thinking when it targeted these frontline positions, without consultation, for abolition?' Brett said.