TODAY'S consultation at Cairns Base Hospital between Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and far northern medicos has nurses up in arms as they fear only hand-picked high-level people will be allowed to attend.

As Mr Rudd and Health and Ageing Minister Nicola Roxon scrub up for the hospital tour and open a one-hour forum on the future direction of health services, a long-serving nurse has risked her job by speaking out before this afternoon's meeting.

"I have not been invited, nobody who might tell the truth has been invited," the nurse who asked to be called Sally said.

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She said the most serious messages Mr Rudd needed to hear were about the state of the hospital and the chronic shortage of nurses.

"Right now, patients with swine flu are spread across the hospital - why haven't they put them all in one ward isolated?," Sally said.

"It is very disheartening."

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Sally also called for the Prime Minister to bring back in-house training for nurses as those who went through university were not prepared for the reality of hospital life with bed pans and bandages.

"When we had full training in the hospital we never had shortages," she said.

"Queensland Health and the Federal Government can promise 100 more beds, but who is going to take care of them?"

A Queensland Health spokesman confirmed the three swine flu patients outside the intensive care unit, which has six cases, are not in the same ward but were isolated from other patients.

• Coma patient was sent home with pills

"If they come out they usually have masks on and people going in take normal protective measures including gowns, gloves and masks," the spokesman said.

He said nurses had not been invited because there was not enough room in the 150-people capacity auditorium where the meeting would be held.

"(But) we have invited all the nursing directors from throughout the region and Cairns Base Hospital and have since invited the overwhelming majority of Cairns base nurse unit managers," he said.

"We regret that we are not able to invite everyone who would like to come but we are doing our level best to ensure there is a diversity of opinion for the Prime Minister to listen to."

Queensland Nurses Union Far North Queensland Region organiser Kathy Struber has been invited.

"It’s my job to represent the workers at the coal face," she said.

It is understood groups outside the medical profession, such as the Cairns Chamber of Commerce, have been invited to the meeting.

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