A clerk at St. Clare's Hospital in St. John's who was fired for looking at more than 20 private medical files will get her job back.

An arbitrator has ruled that the employee should be reinstated at Eastern Health after she serves an eight-month suspension.

"From our perspective it was a good decision," said NAPE president Carol Furlong, whose union which represents the worker.

Furlong said the employee clearly broke the policy but she may not have breached confidentiality.

Woman peeked at files of boss, co-worker

The woman admitted she looked at the files for purposes unrelated to her work, which was a violation of Eastern Health's privacy policy.

One of the files she looked at belonged to her boss.

In another case, she looked at the results of a pregnancy test of a co-worker who had recently gone south for holidays. She said the co-worker feared she'd picked up a sexually-transmitted disease.

Eastern Health CEO finds decision 'appalling'

NAPE president Carol Furlong is happy with the arbitrator's decision. (CBC)

Eastern Health CEO Vickie Kaminski disagrees with the decision.

"It's absolutely appalling that we would have an arbitrator who would not understand the importance of keeping patient information confidential," said Kaminski.

"I think, too, if they looked at it in today's light, with all of the publicity that has been around it, you might get a different ruling yet again."

Kaminski said Eastern Health hasn't decided if it will appeal the decision, but she said it won't stop the health authority from fighting to stop other violations of patient confidentiality.