N.L. doctors want rhetoric toned down

Newfoundland and Labrador's doctors say the health minister used inflammatory language when he said the province's pathologists were acting like children.

"They were words that were harsh," said Rob Ritter, executive director of the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association. "They were words that were humiliating for people on the receiving end."

Ritter said Tuesday that Health Minister Jerome Kennedy went too far when he said an external review of the province's laboratory services found high-paid doctors were squabbling like children.

Ritter said the public expects more from the person responsible for health care in the province.

"As a minister of health, he has some responsibilities for restraint, and it was an unrestrained reaction that wasn't helpful."

The association is now calling for everyone to calm down.

NLMA president Dr. Brendan Lewis said it's time for Kennedy to stop what he called "the intimidation and humiliation approach" and work toward solving the problems in the laboratory.

Ritter said it's time for government officials and doctors to move on.

"The overriding factor in this is let's get past this and start to work in a co-operative fashion," said Ritter.

There has been a string of six resignations at the province's largest health authority — including two pathologists who were laboratory site chiefs — since Eastern Health announced it had accepted the resignation of the head of laboratory services last week.

Dr. Nash Denic, Eastern Health's chief of laboratory services, was the first pathologist to leave a position there after the announcement of recent  trouble at the health authority's biochemistry lab. In early March, the health authority said a miscalibrated machine may have resulted in hundreds of patients getting too much of an immunosuppressant drug, cyclosporine.

One 14-year-old was admitted to an intensive care unit in St. John's after receiving too much of the drug.