Martina Lauterbach, Transcript Section 11

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KAREN: You had mentioned radio traffic and everybody could listen in. How did you -- how did you handle confidentiality?

MARTINA: Confidentiality, nothing. It was zero. Because you know, I mean, everybody in the village or everywhere, surrounding villages and Bethel villages knew, you know, there was no confidentiality. Nothing. So that was pretty bad.

I mean, you know, I think we did say, you know, we didn't -- in the beginning, I remember we used to have -- we did say names because the doctor had to put it in their medical records in Bethel. And I can't remember, I think at the end we did send in copies of the notes with the names on them, but you know, I think at the end, we -- they did say, you know, male or female or, you know, infant, child. But when I first started, I mean, you had to say the name because the doctor had to, you know, put it into their medical records in Bethel.

KAREN: Yeah.

MARTINA: I mean, name, birth date. Yeah. So there was no -- right now, you know, there -- they have telephones and so that's a lot better.

KAREN: Yeah. So when you left in 1972, it was still radio traffic?

MARTINA: It was still radio.

KAREN: And did you have a radio yet in the clinic at that point or was it still the school?

MARTINA: Huh-uh (negative). It was still the school.

KAREN: And what about the other villages around Emmonak, did people from there come in to see you as the health aide?

MARTINA: No. They had their own -- each village had their health aides. Alakanuk had their health aide, they had a couple of them. And Paula was one of them.

KAREN: Right.

MARTINA: And then Alma Hanson was the other in Elengak. And then Sheldon's Point had -- Julia Afkan was the health aide in Sheldon's Point, or Nunam Iqua. And Kotlik, you know, had a couple of health aides. So each, you know, like all the surrounding villages had their own health aides.

KAREN: So there wasn't a need to contact each other. Could the two villages talk to each other by radio if you needed to?

MARTINA: If we needed to. But it wasn't, you know, very much.

KAREN: It was everybody talking to Bethel?

MARTINA: Right. Everybody was. They had one doctor sitting in the -- doing radio traffic. I can't remember at that time, it was maybe ten o'clock maybe, started ten o'clock in the morning, and then I think they were done, depending on how many, you know, the health aide needed to report, you know, from the village. You know, there were -- and you had to give good descriptions over the radio in order for the doctor.

See, that was another hard thing for the doctor in the -- in Bethel or anywhere was because you got this report from the health aide and giving him history, and so it wasn't easy for them also because they -- they weren't seeing the patient. And so diagnosis was, you know, also hard for them.

KAREN: Yeah. Yeah. I was wondering, how did you learn how to know what to tell the doctor and how to describe it or --

MARTINA: Just what we know from the trainings. I mean, you know, they kind of taught you, you know, this is how you, you know, get histories, and you know, you needed to go from kind of like head to toe kind of thing. And that's a good thing to learn.

And, you know, describe, you know, what you see. And what it sounds like. What it feels like. You know. Those sort of things that we have to -- and we learned that from trainings. So...

KAREN: Did you have a manual or a guide to follow at the time?

MARTINA: I think so. It was a very thin, you know, guide. Now they have, you know, the last one that they have, they have two volumes of, you know, their health aide manual. And they are making a new one right now.

KAREN: Right. Yeah, that's why I asked about it because I know now it's very, very important.

MARTINA: Right.

KAREN: And I didn't know if back in the early days how much of that kind of assistance a health aide had.

MARTINA: Yeah. We learned, you know, for blood pressure and stuff, you know, we had a certain -- you know, like norms. And like pulse norms and that kind of stuff that we were taught. And that was another thing, you know, you asked earlier, you know, what we learned and stuff.

KAREN: Right.

MARTINA: And so those were the things that we, you know, looked at.