An "SOS" call for nurses to help staff the Corowa Hospital emergency department is related to border restrictions, Murrumbidgee Local Health District says.
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A clinical nurse consultant attached to the hospital sent out a tweet on Tuesday night saying "we are in desperate need of nursing clinicians for our Corowa Hospital Emergency Department.
"The staff are profoundly depleted. This is an SOS if anyone in Victoria/NSW/SA are able to help," Audas Grant wrote.
The employee was not acting on behalf of MLHD and Corowa Hospital facility manager Ann Turnbull raised border controls in a statement to The Border Mail.
"With the recent border restrictions that have come into place, we have had two new staff members who are unable to commence work at the Hospital as planned," she said.
"In order to ensure we remain safely staffed, our part-time staff have diligently offered to take on extra shifts, and we have also had offers of support from other facilities in Murrumbidgee Local Health District.
"We would like to thank all of our staff who have been so generous with their time and availability over this Christmas and New Year period.
"We are continuing with our efforts to attract new staff to work in our facility."
The call-out on social media received 1100 retweets and has reached the South Australian health sector.
Federation Councillor Paul Miegel was not aware of any issue when contacted by The Border Mail but said it would not shock him if pressure was on the ED.
"We get peak periods, so Christmas, the Easter period, and Victorian long weekends," he said.
"The week between Christmas and New Year, there is a big influx of ED presentations.
"When you run a service 24/7, 365 days, you have to have qualified people to be able to do that.
"People don't want to have to spend 45 minutes in the car or ambulance going to Albury or Wangaratta or wherever else, so we need to make sure we can provide that service.
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"I fully support any call-out to have the correct staffing to be able to provide the right services to the community."
The nine-doctor Corowa Medical Centre supports the hospital with visiting medical officer services during after-hours.
The adjacent health service has 53 beds and 31 residential aged care beds, with a 24-hour accident and emergency department.
