More than 70 branches of the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association have vowed to stop work for a period between 2 and 24 hours on Tuesday and participate in a mass meeting.

Maitland is among 16 branches who voted in support of the action but will not take part due to severe staff shortages.

Maitland branch assistant secretary Kathy Chapman said nurses and midwives were simply too short staffed to be able to step away from their patients and take part - just like they were when they planned a rally earlier this year.

John Hunter Hospital nurses will strike for four hours on Tuesday. Government-funded mental health nurses who work out of the Mater Hospital will also take part.

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The association wants the state government to introduce shift-by-shift staffing ratios to improve the number of nurses to patients on a permanent basis.

"We do endorse the action but we feel that at the moment we are already at life-preserving staffing levels. We are proud that our other colleagues have decided to strike and attend the meeting," Ms Chapman said.

"We thought that while we were happy to support and be in solidarity with everyone else, even doing a two-hour strike here wouldn't be possible because we are so severely short-staffed."

NSW Nurses and Midwives Association Lower Hunter organiser Ashley Dobozy said the mass meeting was a chance to seek feedback from nurses across the state, following the latest State Budget.

She said the association would decide on plan of action once it had received feedback from its members.

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