Lynette Whitlam, secretary of the NSWNMA’s North Shore Private Hospital branch, has been nursing for 53 years, mostly in the public system.

She told the Special General Meeting that she hoped any gains from the union’s public health campaign would flow to private sector nurses.

“I’ve never seen our profession or our patients in a more perilous state than what they are now,” she told the Special General Meeting. “I fully support what the Association and the public nurses are doing.”