Mr Rorris said if elected he would raise the issue in Parliament to "shame" politicians into introducing mandatory ratios in specialty areas such as hospital emergency departments.

"The NSW Nurses and Midwives Association has been campaigning for years to have ratios of nurses to patients adopted as minimum standards of care in our hospitals," he said.

"This includes the implementation of a ratio of one nurse to three patients in our emergency departments.

"It's amazing that neither Liberal or Labor parties have committed to implementing these minimum standards for hospitals.

"I'm committed to supporting this if elected as I think it's a disgrace that it has been left to our nurses and midwives to have to campaign on an issue that is so important to everyone.

"We all need hospitals at some point."

Mr Rorris was joined outside Wollongong Hospital emergency department by retired nurse Lesley Snow on Tuesday.

Mrs Snow, who worked as an ED nurse for most of her 20 years of service, said minimum ratios were needed to ease the load.

"There's the whole issue of exhaustion . . . nurses are being lost to the profession because they can't cope any longer," she said.

"As well as the workload, they're being subjected to assault by patients in casualty who've had to wait a long time - it's becoming very dangerous."

Mrs Snow said improved ratios would lead to "better patient care and better patient outcomes".

NSWNMA regional organiser Mark Murphy said so far neither side of politics had committed to mandatory ratios.

"Currently in peer group A hospitals - which include Sydney hospitals as well as John Hunter and Wollongong hospitals - there is a nurse-to-patient ratio of one to four in medical and surgical wards," he said.

"This compares to say Shellharbour [peer group C] which has a ratio of one to six in these wards, and Shoalhaven [peer group B] which has a ratio of one to five.

"What we're saying is that where you live shouldn't affect the level of care you get, so we want to see the one-to-four ratio expanded to all hospitals.

"We also want to see the expansion of ratios into speciality areas like EDs and paediatrics of one nurse to three patients."

NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner said the Baird Government had invested heavily in nursing staff.

"Like Labor we've never supported ratios - instead we've implemented a system of nursing hours per patient-day," she said. "This gives a hospital much more flexibility so, for instance, if they have a ward with very sick patients then more nurses can be put on that ward."

A busload of Illawarra nurses will participate in co-ordinated industrial action on Wednesday as part of a union-led national day of action.

They will join nurses and other workers from across the state at a Sydney rally to highlight their opposition to the federal government's review of workers' penalty rates and other conditions.

lwachsmuth@fairfaxmedia.com.au