Some 200 people attended the three-hour meeting at the Goulburn Soldiers Club to hear the candidates’ vision for health in the city.

The Association is campaigning to give every patient six hours of nursing care every day, in line with metro hospitals. Currently it is five hours in many rural hospitals, including Goulburn’s.

General secretary Brett Holmes told the forum that nurses had been arguing the case from day one.

“A patient with pneumonia in Goulburn deserves the same amount of care as a patient in Sydney who has access to Royal North Shore and RPA Hospitals,” he said.

“The difference in Goulburn is that it doesn’t have the back-up resources and nurses carry the load.”

The Association’s Goulburn branch secretary Jane Cotter said nurses had pressed the claim every year in negotiations but were yet to score a breakthrough.

“Hopefully we are getting closer and because health is such a big issue, we think it’s a good time to apply some pressure and have the community understand what we are fighting for and why.”

Ms Cotter said reputable studies had shown that for every patient added to a nurse’s workload there was a seven per cent greater chance of the patient dying.

“At Goulburn Base we do our very best but nurses are getting tired,” she said.

“The Ministry of Health says that whatever a patient needs, they will get, but we say, at what cost? It’s putting more and more on us.”

The Association asked every candidate to sign a pledge committing to improved patient ratios.

Only Labor candidate Ursula Stephens and The Greens Iain Fyfe did so.

The topic was also hotly discussed in a question and answer session.

Mary Walker, a nurse for 42 years, 17 of those in Goulburn, asked Goulburn MP Pru Goward why nurses in Goulburn were worth less than in the city, especially given recent statistics showing car accident victims were “four times less likely to survive in a regional hospital than a metro one.”

Ms Goward riled some sectors of the crowd when she questioned whether people were there to talk about patients and health care or “industrial issues.”

“It seems to me that if you look at the results of this hospital – and not one person has said they are not fantastic, the figures show waiting and response times are all improving.”

She said NSW Health did not use fixed nurse to patient ratios but preferred nursing hours per patient per day. Ms Goward described this as a more flexible method that allowed management to allocate resources to the busiest times and areas.

“In the end what this room should care about is the outcomes for Goulburn,” Ms Goward said.

“Cross infection rates are lower than the state average and response times are better than the state average.

“I don’t think you can make the case that people in Goulburn don’t receive a high standard of health care and that’s to the credit of mental and nursing staff.”

GOULBURN MP Pru Goward has hit back at claims she was “handed the seat on a gold plate.”

Goulburn man Dennis Lawless made the statement in a sometimes heated question and answer session at Friday’s health forum at the Soldiers Club.

“Goulburn hasn’t had any money spent on it because of the Liberal Government and the fact it’s considered the safest seat in NSW,” Mr Lawless said.

He asked when Ms Goward was “going to do something about these hospitals.”

The MP countered that it was far from a safe Liberal seat and she had only won by 900 votes.

“I won it from an Independent and a Labor candidate so it’s absolute rubbish to talk about it as a safe Liberal seat,” Ms Goward said.

“The reason I have this decent margin at the moment is because Labor didn’t bother running a candidate last time.

Their disgraceful 16 years in office meant that they didn’t think they could show their face in this town.”

She reminded the audience that the Coalition had spent $21 million on the hospital in three years, but Labor had invested “nothing over 16 years, with some exceptions.”

Ms Goward said Goulburn Base had always missed out over that time, despite being listed as a priority for a rebuild. It had taken her four years to get it to the top again.

Mayor Geoff Kettle and Federal Labor Senator Deb O’Neill joined the five candidates for a Q&A session.

Asked about nurse to patient ratios, Cr Kettle said for him it was very simple.

He just wanted to know that when he or his family went to hospital, they were going to be “properly cared for.”

Dr Stephens said Allied Health Certificate IV courses were giving people a “jump start” into university training.