Your integration into YKHC's pediatric team begins with Dr. Leslie Herrmann and Dr. Jim Marrone, the physician leaders who will contact you directly during the recruitment process. These aren't distant administrators—they're practicing pediatricians who understand intimately what this work demands and what it offers. They've made Bethel their professional home, navigated the same challenges you'll face, and built careers around the unique satisfaction of providing expert pediatric care to Alaska Native children across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
Dr. Herrmann's journey at YKHC began 12.5 years ago when she arrived straight from residency, signing what she thought would be a two-year commitment. Instead, she stayed, living in Bethel for four years before relocating to Anchorage while continuing her YKHC practice through commuting. She notes that her social life in Bethel was richer than in the city—highlighting the paradoxical way small, remote communities can foster deeper, more meaningful connections. "You tend to rely on the people more often in Bethel because you don't have a lot of amenities," she explains, capturing the essence of why the community can be both challenging and profoundly fulfilling.
Dr. Marrone and Dr. Herrmann conduct thorough recruitment processes that can include multiple conversations and reference checks before onsite interviews or formal offers. They are selective because thriving at YKHC requires not only clinical competence but also adaptability, cultural humility, comfort with ambiguity, and sincere interest in cross-cultural medicine. Their goal is to ensure the alignment between what you're seeking and what YKHC offers—long before you invest in relocating to rural Alaska.
You'll join a tightly knit outpatient pediatric team comprising roughly 2.3 FTE physicians and Deb Magnusson, a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner contributing 0.5 to 0.6 FTE. The deliberately small team size fosters close working relationships, deep trust, and shared understanding of one another's clinical reasoning and practice patterns. When reviewing notes from Dr. Nagno or Dr. Superom, you'll recognize their style and thought process because you collaborate closely, discuss cases daily, and share management responsibilities for the CPP registry.
This structure creates continuity rarely seen in larger clinics. When you're away on vacation or attending CME, your colleagues seamlessly cover your patients, ensuring thoughtful management rather than superficial stopgap care. Upon returning, you won't face uncertainty about what happened in your absence—your colleagues will have documented thoroughly and communicated clearly.
Deb Magnusson enhances the team with advanced practice expertise, practical problem-solving, and strong rapport with families. The relationship between physicians and advanced practice providers at YKHC reflects mutual respect and complementary strengths, not hierarchy.
Although you won't carry inpatient responsibilities or take call, you'll collaborate closely with YKHC's pediatric hospitalists—Dr. Wong, Dr. Keshi, and others—who provide 24/7 coverage for acute admissions, emergency department consultations, and radio medical traffic (RMT) outside clinic hours.
Hospitalists handle acute care needs for your CPP patients while you retain responsibility for long-term coordination. When a chronically ill patient is admitted, the hospitalist stabilizes the immediate issue, and you reintegrate the child into outpatient management after discharge. This mutually respectful partnership supports seamless transitions of care without overburdening providers on either side.
During business hours, hospitalists may reach out to you for outpatient perspectives, medication guidance, or insights based on longstanding patient relationships. These interactions strengthen the shared approach to care that defines YKHC's system.
Your clinical success depends on a robust support system that manages logistics, coordination, and essential care functions. YKHC's infrastructure ensures that you can practice high-level pediatric medicine without becoming overwhelmed by administrative tasks.
YKHC employs over 80 clinicians across emergency medicine, family medicine, obstetrics, surgery, anesthesia, dentistry, optometry, and behavioral health. You will regularly collaborate across disciplines—consulting family medicine on dermatologic questions, coordinating with behavioral health for complex cases, or working with obstetricians regarding high-risk infants.
The organizational culture encourages consultation and teamwork. YKHC's wiki explicitly notes: “This is why we expect all new staff to ask lots of questions and consult more experienced providers with any care, follow up, [or] referral issues that come up.” This culture reduces the pressure to know everything immediately and reinforces safe, team-centered medicine.
YKHC’s collaborative culture is not aspirational—it’s lived reality. Clinicians depend on one another professionally and personally, especially when facing emotionally difficult cases such as child abuse, pediatric deaths, or ethically complex decisions. You’ll never navigate these situations alone.
Competence is valued over ego. Even physicians with decades of experience continue to consult colleagues. New providers are expected to ask questions, not to pretend mastery. The wiki notes that “it takes at least a year to get comfortable” with Bush medicine, setting realistic expectations for your learning curve.
Many pediatricians build long-term careers at YKHC, finding profound satisfaction in the clinical complexity, work-life balance, and strong community connections. Dr. Herrmann’s 12+ year tenure exemplifies this stability. Those who ultimately leave often do so after fulfilling their contracts, recognizing that while the experience was meaningful, long-term rural practice isn’t the right fit. YKHC respects this and maintains positive relationships with departing clinicians.
The important takeaway: enough physicians stay long-term to provide continuity, mentorship, and a stable clinical environment for new providers joining the team.
Your peers expect clinical competence, willingness to learn, cultural humility, and commitment to collaborative practice. They expect you to:
They do not expect perfection, immediate mastery, or flawless adaptation to rural practice. They expect genuine effort, growth, and alignment with YKHC’s mission of providing culturally informed, high-quality care.
Before seeing patients independently, you'll receive comprehensive orientation including RAVEN training, guideline review, referral workflow familiarization, and one-on-one mentorship with experienced pediatricians. You'll have access to YKHC’s detailed online provider manual—an essential resource outlining clinical tools, disease management protocols, and policies.
Continued development happens through clinical rounds, case conferences, QI initiatives, and precepting opportunities with rotating residents. YKHC supports 10 paid CME days annually with allowances for travel, registration, and educational materials—many physicians pair CME with family trips, leveraging Alaska’s unique geography for convenient travel opportunities.
You won’t enter a large, impersonal department. You’ll join a small, deeply interconnected team where your presence matters, your contributions are visible, and your relationships with colleagues become meaningful professionally and personally. The isolation that defines Bethel’s geography paradoxically creates community among the clinicians who choose this work—relationships that many physicians describe as among the most rewarding aspects of practicing at YKHC.