The issues were raised at the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation's annual delegates conference, attended by state and federal members on Thursday.

Tasmanian secretary Emily Shepherd said the role of the coronavirus has affected nurses over the past 12 months and was expected to have an ongoing impact.

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"Recognising that COVID-19 has not gone away, and particularly for our members working in health with the lessening of restrictions, that means even further impacts and challenges," she said.

"Certainly we're looking at how we retain our existing workforce and how we're going to recruit more nurses and midwives and assistants in nursing and care-workers to our health sector in Tasmania."

Ms Shepherd said incentivising nurses and placing their salaries on par with those of nurses and midwives in other states was necessary to develop a sustainable workforce.

"There's been much discussion around burnout and fatigue of our existing workforce," she said.

"We've written to the Tasmanian Premier seeking a retention bonus for our hard-working nurses and midwives across the state's public sector to match the incentives provided by the Victorian government of $3000, so that we can actually retain our nurses and midwives in the public sector."

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Premier and Health Minister Jeremy Rockliff was invited to the conference, but was unable to attend due to previous engagements.

A spokesperson for the premiers said Mr Rockliff had met with the ANMF earlier in the week to discuss the federation's concerns.

Labor's spokesperson for health Anita Dow said the Premier's absence from the forum had been noted by those in attendance.

"It's very poor that the government had no representative here today and I think that tells you a lot about their regard for our healthcare workers across Tasmania," she said.

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She said the state's nursing workforce had been in "crisis" for some time with solutions sought on several occasions.

"The ANMF for many, many months called for a workforce development plan for when we had COVID in our community, that plan hasn't been produced by this government," she said.

"We've called for that modelling ... It hasn't been produced at a dire point in time where they just simply aren't enough staff across our health system to provide services."

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