Eastern Health CEO Vickie Kaminski said work is backing up at the health authority's laboratories. (CBC)

A widening dispute between Newfoundland and Labrador's largest health authority and its doctors is having an impact on patients, an official says.

Seven physicians have resigned from administrative and supervisory roles at Eastern Health this month, many of them in protest of recent disciplinary action.

On Friday, Eastern Health chief executive officer Vickie Kaminski said seven of the authority’s 24 pathologists are now on sick leave. The pathologists have also come in for intense criticism — with both Health Minister Jerome Kennedy and Premier Danny Williams calling them "childish" — in the wake of an external review that pointed to mistrust and dysfunctional working relationships.

Kaminski said work is now backing up at Eastern Health’s labs.

She said it now it takes up to half a month, roughly three times the normal wait, for a patient to get breast cancer test results back from the lab.

"It is long. It is a long time. We are working to get that backlog resolved," Kaminski told reporters Friday.

The Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association told CBC News physicians are resigning to protest how former clinical chief of pathology Nash Denic has been treated by Eastern Health.

The authority accepted Denic’s resignation after it revealed a miscalibrated machine may have resulted in hundreds of patients receiving too much cyclosporine, a drug that in high doses can cause kidney damage.

The authority said Denic waited too long to tell top officials about the problem.

The health authority later revealed that Denic had wanted to resign in December, long before there were concerns about cyclosporine errors.

As well, colleagues said Denic should be praised, not condemned, for having tried to improve standards in the lab.

Sitting ducks

NLMA executive director Rob Ritter said clinical chiefs across the province now feel like sitting ducks.

Rob Ritter says clinical chiefs across the province are feeling vulnerable in the wake of a forced resignation at Eastern Health. (CBC)

"If they don't have all the tools to do the job correctly, the risk of something going wrong increase," Ritter said Friday.

"They realize that if something does go wrong, they're the ones who are going to be accused of messing up, when it’s the system that isn't giving them what they need."

Eastern Health convened a meeting with all of its clinical chiefs earlier this week. Kaminski said several announced they were thinking of resigning from those posts.

"[The clinical chiefs] are feeling particularly vulnerable because if there is an error in their division, what's going to happen to them?," said Kaminski.

She said it's now a priority to make her clinical chiefs comfortable in their leadership roles.

Kaminski said Eastern health is doing all it can to reduce the backlog in its labs.

The controversy over the labs has dovetailed into a now-public dispute between the NLMA and the province over its next contract.

Government negotiators walked away from the bargaining table on Thursday, but Williams and Kennedy on Friday insisted negotiations are still underway.

The NLMA asked for binding arbitration, but was rebuffed by the government.