A Melbourne nurse has been sacked after she was caught on Skype stealing money from a new father's wallet.

The new dad was talking to his father in Greece from Epworth Hospital's maternity ward when he was called away from the room to help bathe his baby.

While he was gone, his father witnessed a nurse rummage through his belongings.

When he returned, the man's father said: "My son, you've just been robbed".

The man's wife, Chrysa, told Fairfax Radio her father-in-law told them the nurse "took something red".

"He saw a woman come into the room and she tried to open the wardrobe and was looking [around]," she said.

"Then she went to the chair. My husband's jacket was there and she took the wallet and she opened it.

"Then we supposed it was a $20 note."

The nurse came back into the room while the father-in-law was still talking to the family on Skype and identified her as the thief.

Epworth chief executive Alan Kinkade said he was shocked by the "awful" incident.

"Epworth is a very values-based organisation, we uphold our integrity as one of our core values," he said.

"As soon as we became aware of the incident, we conducted an investigation and that nurse is no longer with us."

The hospital said theft was a common problem in all hospitals, both public and private, but the issue was catching the perpetrators.

Chrysa said they did not want the nurse to lose her job but reported it because they did not want it to happen to anyone else.

"[The hospital] gave us the $20 back and said sorry," she added.

Lisa Fitzpatrick, the Victoria branch secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, said there were 93,000 nurses working in the hospital system and they deserved the trust of family and patients.

"We are sorry and shocked that this happened, and believe that this is an isolated incident," she said.