KAREN:  So as a supervisor instructor, can you talk about what you do in that job? 

PAULA:  Well, I -- all the time I just had about 36 health aides to supervise, in six or nine villages.  I had more villages sometimes than what I should have.  And depending on the size of where I live around there, they are mostly bigger villages, or I had more health aides to supervise. 

And so I have daily -- almost daily contact with them, and make sure that they have schedules, every month they have schedules, who is going to be on call. 

And then YKHC started having that the health aides work three weeks on and one week off.  That worked.  There's good advantages and bad advantages to that.  Excuse me. 

Good advantages was that the health aides weren't as stressed out as, you know, as they used to be during that time.  Having one week off. 
Another -- well, the bad advantage was that the health aides want to be off all the time.  I mean, it kind of -- they liked it, you know, being off and still earn salary.  So that was kind of... 

But I see that after I retire, they didn't have no more one week off.  So... 

KAREN:  So what kind of schedule do they have now? 

PAULA:  I don't know.  I just -- I just really don't pay attention anymore. 

KAREN:  But when you started as the health aide, did you get a week off every month? 

PAULA:  No. 

KAREN:  What was your schedule? 

PAULA:  Just work day and night.  When we first started. 

It's when YKHC started, that's when we started having schedule.  We worked six -- six hours a day, five days a week, and are supposed to have a week off -- I mean, a day off on Saturday and Sunday, only for emergencies. 
But people, it took people a long time to finally understand, or you know, even it's not emergency on weekends, they used to.  You know. 

And then we're supposed to have one month -- earn one month vacation time, if you work all year.  And still, the community wouldn't see that.  They still call you.  They still like they were. 

So one year my husband and I made camp and -- camp in month of June away from Alakanuk to -- to have vacation. 

But now, the health aides have vacation.  People are used to it now.  It took us long time to convince the community that we work six hours a day and have not where -- only take care of emergencies on weekends. 

KAREN:  So when you were first starting, how did you deal with that schedule of you were there all the time and on call all the time? 

PAULA:  Well, people call you any time of the day or night.  And even we got schedule, six hour work time, they still call you. 

And there's -- in every village, there's one family where you have -- they want you to come to their house.  And no matter how many times we tell them that we have all the equipment in the clinic, they should come to the clinic, they still want us to go to their house. 

And in every village, there's a chronic person that comes to you, come to clinic all the time, all the time, and there's nothing really wrong with that person.  And we're supposed to treat -- once we go into the clinic, we treat people equally.  Even though some chronic people like that. 

And it was good that I know that when I was supervisor and stuff there because when the health aides complain about another village, complain about those kind of people, I always tell them that they have them in every village. 

And another thing that my experience that helped the other health aides was that people like to complain.  Negative things outweighs good things.  They like to complain. 

Like if the health aide is 10 minutes late, you hear that maybe for a week.  If the health aide stay up all night in the clinic taking care of emergency, nobody say anything about it. 

So -- and the complaints, I taught the health aides how to challenge that. 
Because when there was a complaint about me and all the complaints weren't true, I was going to, right off, I was going to quit. 

But I think about it for some time because one of the doctors told me that with so much training and experience, I shouldn't quit.  Just take maybe a month off. 

And I keep thinking about it and keep thinking about it.  Pretty soon I said, if -- if I quit right now, the person who complained about me is going to win.  And all 500 other people need my help to take care of them, you know, in the village.  I know I was working okay, but I said, I am going to even do better.  So I did that. 

So I challenged things like that, and I taught the other health aides to do the same thing, and they appreciate that.  A lot of them are still working up to this day.