A carer who works at a rest home in Whanganui said on night shifts where he works, there might at times be only one nurse and one carer to cover almost 30 residents in a particular wing of the facility.
"If some emergencies happen then we are unable to deal with it because we've got to deal with one emergency - we can't leave them on their own," he said.
"We have to stay with that nurse and then eventually use the machines to get that person back into bed and we could have someone else more serious but we just have to say 'this one's worse than this one' and leave them there until we get around to their [emergency]."
He said the staffing concerns mainly occurred at night, as there were more nurses and carers working in the day.
But he hoped the petition would lead to the Government forcing rest home companies to hire more nurses and carers.
He wants every unit to have at least two or three caregivers and the equivalent number of nurses.
"It is very stressful," he said.
"If it was someone else's mother there, they would be the first one to say 'why didn't you come to my mother, or my father first' but we can't because we've got no staff.
"Sometimes at night you have one nurse going to three or four different wings [of the rest home] and they can't cover all that."
A spokesperson for Ryman Healthcare, which owns Jane Winstone Retirement Village, said the organisation's staffing levels were safe.
Heritage Lifecare - which owns Broadview Lifecare & Village in Whanganui - said it followed sector standards on where its staffing levels needed to be.
Broadview Lifecare & Village offers rest home, dementia, hospital and other forms of care.
The organisation's general manager of operations, Brigid London, said she was satisfied with the levels of staffing at Heritage Lifecare's facilities.
She said the level of staffing depended on the need.
"You can't have a one size fits all.
"You can't say for 40 beds you need this many staff."
Residents in hospital care needed a ratio of one nurse to every five or six residents, whereas in the rest home that staffing requirement was more like one to every 10 residents, she said.
London said that at her company's facilities, in situations where more staff were needed to deal with more than one emergency at a time, they were able to call on others in different wings of the site.
"So long as you're making sure you're using a formula that fits the acuity levels of your residents then you'll have the right staffing," she said.
She said rest homes were heavily regulated and auditors came in regularly to check "the full operation and that includes staffing levels".
The industry as a whole was having difficulty hiring and retaining nurses and carers.
Covid-19 had provided a double whammy, making it harder to employ nurses from the overseas "pipeline" and the vaccine mandate had also led to a loss in staff, London said.
She said many nurses would leave rest homes to go work at district health board hospitals where they could be paid more.
