The SA Nursing Federation has been wrestling Health SA over conditions for emergency department nurses at Lyell McEwin and Royal Adelaide hospitals.

Union secretary Elizabeth Dabars said nurses were “under extreme pressure and patient safety was compromised”.

Nurses have been allocated up to 10 patients at a time, despite a limit of one nurse to three patients agreed between SA

Health and the union.

Nurses are also worried about unreasonable patient waiting times, the long-term use of emergency beds for mental health and other non-crisis patients and lack of essential equipment.

After getting little response from SA Health, the union threatened to take the department to court for breaking the staff ratio agreement.

SA Health then quickly agreed to look at union concerns.

Chief executive Dr Tony Sherbon told Ms Dabars he would be responsible for ensuring patient ratios were followed and would work on other problems.

But the Nursing Federation is still desperate for help in the aged care sector.

“We have called for minimum staffing levels in aged care. People would be surprised to learn there aren’t any, nor are

there minimum ratios of carers to residents,” said federal secretary Ged Kearney.

Ms Kearney said aged care nurses were on average paid $300 less a week than other nurses. This, and the problems with staff ratios, made it difficult to retain workers in the aged care sector.

“While we endorse a call for more beds the idea of increasing the number of residents without tackling staff shortages is frightening,” she said.

Tina Dowling has worked in aged care for 20 years and has just started studying for a nursing qualification.

She said the conditions are very stressful.

“There’s a massive problem with staffing. There’s no structure. It does impact on the kind of care you can give,” she said.

Federal Minister for Ageing Justine Elliot said the Rudd Government is paying for more than 6300 new beds and training to more than 2300 aged care workers.

But, says Ms Kearney, the average age of nurses in aged care is getting close to 50, so in 10 years about half of them will be retiring.