"You feel awful - very tired, very exhausted. I’d finish my shift at 10pm, I’d get home at about 10.30pm. You’re too switched on from the shift you just finished to go straight to sleep, and then you have to be up again at 5am the next morning."

Gemma Watson, 25, is a nurse who worked in the emergency department at Liverpool Hospital, in Sydney's south-west, for 16 months, but the workload and short turnarounds between shifts made her so stressed that she eventually moved to a less-frantic hospital and took part-time hours.

“The change of pace has really done it for me": Gemma Watson moved from Liverpool to Wollongong Hospital. Credit:Brook Mitchell

Liverpool is one of the busiest hospitals in NSW - quarterly reports from the NSW Bureau of Health Information show 22,000 cases presenting themselves to the emergency room in each three-month period.

Due to shift patterns known as "late earlies", Ms Watson often found herself back at work within seven hours of leaving the night before. It was not uncommon for nurses to be rostered on a morning shift the day after doing an afternoon shift. She estimates she was getting, on average, five hours of sleep between shifts.