THEY said Friday nights were a war zone, but with Cairns hotels calling last drinks at 11.30pm because of Anzac Day, the hospital's emergency department was empty.

Nurses treated half the usual amount of drug and alcohol-affected patients over the weekend compared with the normally hectic Friday and Saturday nights.

The night before Anzac Day saw pubs and club close their doors to patrons at midnight and the department, described as a war zone in recent times, had beds available, no ambulances waiting outside and no staff harassed by drunks.

On the invitation of hospital staff, The Cairns Post spent Friday night and Anzac Day morning at the Cairns Base Hospital's ED.

Empty is an overstatement; on arrival at 11pm we encountered a handcuffed man with a head injury under police guard because of an alleged assault at a pub. In a one-hour period, the hospital had a nauseous and vomiting baby, a 37-year-old with ear pain and another person with a respiratory complaint.

A 14-year-old boy was discharged with pain relievers after he had a fall from his bike at the BMX track, hurting his shoulder and knee.

Faced with the rare sight of empty beds, the nurses attributed their good fortune to pubs and clubs shutting down earlier than usual on a Friday night.

They have reason to reckon so. Alcohol-related presentations in the department have recently jumped by 78 per cent - from 232 in 2007 to 413 last year. In the first three months of this year, staff have faced down 122 drunks, an increase of 39 per cent on the 88 drunk patients in the same time last year.

Nurse Lance Armstrong-Waters, attending to tourist Stephanie O'Neill, said pubs and clubs in Cairns should wind back the alcohol-serving clock "big time".

"It's unusual for Friday to be quiet - it's usually quite horrendous," Mr Armstrong-Waters said.

"Some of them (venues) have their drinking specials - pubs telling them to drink as much as they can and then they end up here to see us.

"We've got big-city problems in a small town. The vicious beatings you would see here, you would see in Perth and Sydney."

Colleague Jarred Brose, who has been working as a nurse for three years, agreed that serving of alcohol until 3am should be cut back.

"It's unusual to come on shift and find empty beds. I normally work Friday and Saturday night duties, and we are normally inundated with intoxicated people coming through the door," Mr Brose said.

Mr Armstrong-Waters said he could not count the people he had nursed over drunken beatings and stabbings.

"You do get shocked when you do see women in those conditions - they are among the more vicious assaults," he said.

Nurse unit manager Dennis Brinn said staff and patient safety was priority No. 1 for the department with increased in-house security officers and police patrols.

"There's still a lot of public holidays coming up but by the looks of it you take the pubs out of the equation, the workload drops off," Mr Brinn said.

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