Barbara Johnson, Part 1, Transcript Section 6

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Barbara Johnson, Part 1
Transcript Section 6

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KAREN: And so what is it about health aide work that you like so much?

BARBARA: Just helping people, you know. I think nothing makes me feel so good as being able to help someone, you know, if they are real sick or -- or even with people that are having problems mentally, you know. And I always like to be able to help them and try to see them help themselves, you know.

Because we all know we're doing mostly clinic work right now, we started off doing dental work, dental emergencies like if someone has a toothache or something, we'd see them or if they had a filling fall out, we are trained to do the temporary fillings. So that it wouldn't hurt so bad until they get to see a dentist.

KAREN: And so the health aides are trained to also do the dental -- the basic dental?

BARBARA: Yeah.

KAREN: Is that a new thing?

BARBARA: No, we've always done that.

KAREN: Oh.

BARBARA: You know. But we really wanted to push for the health aide, dental health aides because they are so badly needed, you know.

Not to take the place of a dentist, but you know, to -- to help the patients that you have a bad toothache or, you know, abscessed tooth or something when a dentist is not here because, they only get to come here like a week out of, I think, four -- four times a year, about that, and they stay like a week.

KAREN: Yeah.

BARBARA: And they do a lot of work, but there's more and more people moving here now, you know. So we get to send kids out now on Denali Kid Care, since that came about, it was -- we were able to get more help for them.

Then we also did mental health work, too, because, you know, someone was depressed and we would help, we would refer them to Mount Edgecumbe to the dental health -- or the mental health program there.

So that's good, you know. And we did a little physical therapy, too, but not as much as I would have liked to have seen. You know.

And health education, we could go into the schools was what I did was went -- I went into the schools and taught about, you know, just nutrition and good -- good food to eat, your own Native food, you know, and how good it is for them to eat their own food. And not so much junk food.

KAREN: That's good.

BARBARA: Uh-hum. And then we also taught about different -- different things, you know, like what -- what to look for when you have an earache, you know, and why you have one, what causes it, and also tuberculosis.

You know, we don't see that very much anymore, but we have to really keep track of the people and the kids with their shots and stuff. And teach the kids about AIDS, you know, and what it is and how to be careful. We teach those things.

We don't go into the schools as much as we should because the clinic part is taking too much of the health aide time now.