Willa Ashenfelter and Irene Aukongak, Part 1, Transcript Section 9

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Willa Ashenfelter and Irene Aukongak, Part 1
Transcript Section 9

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KAREN: So before it was Norton Sound when you were working for the Native Service or Public Health Service or whatever, what was --

WILLA: Well, it was Public Health Service.

IRENE: Public Health Service.

KAREN: What was that like working for them?

IRENE: They did some training when they first started, too, we used to go to Kotzebue or Anchorage to trainings. And then after, later on when Norton Sound Hospital started, we started coming here.

WILLA: I worked with -- before they had the training center, they had something called the PAC HA PA. I don't know if you've ever heard --

IRENE: Oh, yes, the PAC HA PA.

WILLA: It was a health -- it was maybe the very beginning of the health aide training where they were trying to standardize the training all over Alaska.
There were doctors and nurses and health aide people like Karen, they would meet and plan the programs for -- for things that they wanted to teach us.

I went to Dillingham one year, one fall, with that -- that program. They wanted a health aide's perspective on things, so I went there. And we went to Kodiak one year. A couple times we went to Anchorage.

So it's been a long time since -- I know the people that were in charge of the program were trying to make this easier for us and standardize our training.

KAREN: And so once they started having training, what kind of training did you get and where did you go and for how long?

WILLA: Seems like they used to call us in for a week at a time at the very beginning, and then two weeks.

IRENE: Yeah. And then a month.

WILLA: Yeah, and then later on they -- they'd call us in for four weeks at a time.

KAREN: And that would be to Nome or you'd go to Anchorage or?

IRENE: To Nome.

WILLA: To here, mostly.

IRENE: When we were getting --

WILLA: Yeah. Yeah. And I think those were after they start standardizing the training for all over Alaska.

IRENE: How many trainings we had to go to?

WILLA: I think we went to four.

IRENE: Four.

WILLA: Yeah. And then the last one with the doctor where we went in for clinical. And had to work under a doctor for -- was that two weeks?

IRENE: Two weeks I think it was. I think it's two weeks.

WILLA: I missed that -- that part of the training, but they sent a doctor to work with me in the clinic in White Mountain. But I think I -- I might have missed out a lot because I --

IRENE: We did a lot up here.

WILLA: Yeah, because we didn't always see the patients at our city, or the number of patients I will have seen here instead of the ones at home.

KAREN: So what kind of things did they teach you in the training?

WILLA: We started from the very beginning, the basics of the thermometer, blood pressure, weight.

IRENE: Height, weight.

WILLA: Then later on they started teaching us systems of the body, what to look for, what's normal and abnormal.

IRENE: And we had to go through anatomy of the body.

WILLA: Yeah, anatomy.

IRENE: And all the way down. You know. We had to learn all that stuff.

KAREN: Do you think the training they provided was adequate for the cases you ended up having to deal with?

WILLA: I think so. And they made us make sure -- if they were sending new instruments to the villages, they made sure we knew how to use them, that we were familiar with.

IRENE: And they trained us a year before we would take something new home.

WILLA: Made sure we knew how to use them.

I remember one time they -- for one of our classes, they showed us how to do catheterizations. And the week or when I went home, I ended up using what I learned. And it really helped because I used it for an elderly man, he couldn't -- he couldn't pee anymore and he was just getting really bloated.

So I explained to him, I learned how, and I told him what to do. And by the people in the villages, I think they had -- I would think they were pretty brave for us -- for us to let them -- for us to do stuff to them.

But he was so relieved. He kept telling me, I don't need to go to the hospital. I said, no, you need to go. I just did this because it needed to be done. He was so happy he felt better.

IRENE: I did a few, too, but seems like men always asked for me to do stuff, you know, to do their exam. They didn't -- kind of didn't like to go to these young --

WILLA: The newer health aides?

IRENE: Yeah, the newer health aides. They always asked for me to do it. So I guess being an elderly type lady, it helps.