?Falling over in a screaming heap?: overworked staff quit under-resourced NSW regional hospital

One of New South Wales' major regional hospitals had to source its own triage tent, is sending Covid tests six hours away due to a lack of space for its own diagnosis machine, and has had positive patients wait 30 hours to be transferred to a designated hospital for those with the virus.

Doctors at the Tweed hospital, which is 1km from the Queensland border in northern NSW and serves a hinterland that includes Byron Bay, are even donning personal protective equipment to drive home, in their own cars, asymptomatic Covid-positive patients because taxis won't take them.

Kristin Ryan-Agnew, president of the local branch of the Nurses and Midwives Association and a senior nurse at the hospital, said local Covid cases were tripling daily, much faster than the 5o% growth in new cases reported for NSW as a whole on Wednesday.

As a result of increased presentations to Tweed's emergency department, nurses were doing "double shifts every day" with one day off before resuming the toil. "They're going to fall over in a screaming heap," she said. "They will not be able to manage."

Eighteen staff, many of them senior, have resigned since December out of a roster of about 150, citing burnout and the better conditions offered over the border.

Queensland offers $1,800 a year for nurses' education, a Covid bonus - both absent in NSW - and higher wages, Ryan-Agnew said.

"They were really top-notch, really good quality staff, and they can walk up to the Gold Coast and they'll just completely snaffle them."