Dr. Bill James, Part 1, Transcript Section 5

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Dr. Bill James, Part 1
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KAREN: When did the hospital shut down in Tanana?

DR. JAMES: Mid '80s sometime.

KAREN: So when you -- the various times you were there back and forth, what kind of housing did you have? Did the hospital provide housing?

DR. JAMES: Uh-hum. Yeah. We had -- we had half of an apartment building. It was a three-bedroom apartment. It was kind of crowded. It had running water and heat and hospital maintained, so it was no problem at all. It was right next to the -- it was right between the hospital and the school.

And the kids would never go to school until they saw the light come on in their room, and then they would rush out the door and rush over to school.

KAREN: So when was your first experience with -- well, I was going to say with health aides, but the thing with health aides is there was the official Community Health Aide Program, but my understanding that people like Bertha Moses, for instance, were doing --

DR. JAMES: Yeah.

KAREN: -- were helping work before they were officially health aides.

DR. JAMES: Uh-hum.

KAREN: So in 1960, '62, when you were in Tanana, were there people like Bertha that --

DR. JAMES: Well, there were -- there were people like Bertha, there was a missionary in Allakaket, and there was -- I think the wife was a nurse. And I think that's kind of how Bertha got started. A lot of them were -- the older ones were midwives sort of. And they would help out.

I usually took a nurse with me on the field trips, sometimes I would. And the pilot would often back us, would help out, you know.

KAREN: So then what led into your experiences with actually official health aides? What kind of experiences did you have there?

DR. JAMES: The first time we were in Tanana, I forget who it was, it could have been Bertha or someone, came to the hospital. I guess it was in the early '60s.

And we realized there were some women in the various villages who were sort of health leaders or liaison people or -- and so like I say, I don't remember if it was Bertha or who it was.

But we asked her, would you like to learn some more. So after she got better, we said, well, why don't you stay around for a few days and learn some things.

And so the nurses taught them to take blood pressures and to take temperatures, and I would show them the ear infections and just very off-the-cuff sort of thing.

And we thought it would be real good to have people in the village with some training. We taught her to use a stethoscope and otoscope. And how to treat ear infections and so forth.

And then we gave her some -- left some medicine in the village for her to use. And we went to a medical directors meeting in Anchorage and I brought up the fact that we were planning on trying to bring each one of these women into Tanana for a week or so to try to give them some training. And I was told in Anchorage I could not do it.

And I remember part of the reason I went to Tanana was that I didn't get along with the head of the hospital in Anchorage. And I thought that he didn't have much good sense.

One time -- the hospital was always overcrowded and he would issue an order saying we can't have any admissions while we're so much overcrowded. And Fridays was tonsillectomy day when I was in Anchorage. And Dr. Shuff taught me to do tonsillectomies, so I'd do four or five tonsillectomies.

And our pediatric ward was overcrowded. And so we did the -- I did the tonsils on four or five kids. And then they went to the recovery room, and then after they were recovered, we took them back to the pediatric ward, and he said we couldn't admit them to the ward because the ward was overcrowded.

Well, what do you want to do with them? You know, it was one of those things.

KAREN: Yeah, what were you supposed to do with them?

DR. JAMES: I don't know. There was another ward somewhere that wasn't overcrowded, but I thought it was best to have them on the pediatric ward where the nurses were used to them.

KAREN: Right.

DR. JAMES: It wasn't that we were admitting them again, they were already there, we took them out to do the tonsils, and later in the day we were bringing them back.

KAREN: And their beds had been taken by somebody else.

DR. JAMES: So I didn't think he was competent and I let him know. And then he's the same one who told me that we couldn't bring people in, there was no money for it.

And I remember telling him, well, we're going to do it, you won't know who they are because we'll admit them to the hospital and you won't know what we're doing. And he threatened me with court-martial if I did something like that.

But then we did bring a few women in to try to get them a little bit of training.

KAREN: So you sort of did it anyway a little bit?

DR. JAMES: So we did it anyway.

And then when I came back in '73, the official Health Aide Program had been in force for a while, and Dr. Johnson was the head of it. And I can't remember if there was another doctor who was sort of his assistant who then took over who ran the program then for many years afterwards. I can't remember his name now.

KAREN: I'm sure -- I'm sure Walter told me and I can't remember either.

DR. JAMES: Uh-hum.

KAREN: Lots of names go in these interviews.