Nurses have sent a letter to the NSW Health Minister Carmel Tebbutt requesting a meeting to discuss the plight of Kempsey Hospital’s ED, and to deliver a petition signed by 6300 Macleay residents calling for the additional nurses.

Ms Tebbutt was invited to a street march staged by nurses in Kempsey last month, but declined.

In a letter received a day after the march, a spokesperson for Ms Tebbutt informed organisers the Minister was unable to attend.

The letter said “the Government and the Department of Health recognise the important role all categories of nurses play in the care of patients in the hospitals of NSW.

“As a health system we have an obligation to deliver safe and effective care to our patients”.

Nurses began a series of public rallies in November calling for the North Coast Area Health Service to employ an extra registered nurse per shift at Kempsey Hospital’s overburdened ED.

It followed a frustrating two-year battle with the Health Service in the industrial relations court.

Nurse organiser Di Lohmann said the Minister’s letter showed the message was still not getting through.

“In the letter the Minister acknowledges both the importance of the role of nurses and our joint obligation to deliver safe and effective care to our patients in the hospitals of NSW,” she said.

“Not only do the nurses of Kempsey Hospital hold the care and safety of our patients as our highest priority, we have been trying in vain for almost two years to alert the Health Service and more recently the Department of Health that Kempsey Hospital ED is unsafe for our patients.”

Oxley MP Andrew Stoner has written to the Minister requesting her imm- ediate intervention in the matter.

He concluded a three-page letter to Ms Tebbutt with a plea to visit Kempsey and talk to the nurses.

The nurses are waiting to meet North Coast Area Health Service CEO Chris Crawford.

Mr Crawford told the nurses he would visit Kempsey to talk about their concerns, but a date has not been set.