Proclamation 5241—Emergency Medicine Week, 1984

Each year an estimated nine million people in this country sustain injuries which require immediate medical attention. Two groups of dedicated Americans provide this kind of medical care: emergency department personnel, who provide care in trauma centers, and emergency medical technicians and paramedics, most of them volunteers, who provide prehospital emergency care.

These emergency medical personnel throughout our Nation are specialists trained to handle illnesses and injuries which threaten life or limb. They must be available daily on a 24-hour basis to all patients who need medical aid. The efforts of these trained men and women have saved thousands of lives.

Vast improvements in emergency medicine have been made in the past fifteen years, and emergency department personnel have completed extensive training and continuing education to keep up with these improvements. The Departments of Transportation and Health and Human Services, together with State and local governments, have provided radio communications systems, equipment, and training courses for emergency medical personnel. These advances make it possible to respond quickly to the needs of the injured and to transport them to appropriate hospital emergency medical facilities within the "Gold Hour" after the injury. This is the time when emergency medical care is most effective in saving lives.

We salute the Nation's emergency medical services personnel: those who staff the ambulances, those who provide medical control, and those physicians and nurses in the trauma centers whose daily efforts are devoted to emergency medicine. We all depend upon their skills and dedication.

The Congress, by House Joint Resolution 545, has designated the week of September 16 through 22, 1984 as "Emergency Medicine Week" and has authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in honor of this observance.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week of September 16 through September 22, 1984 as Emergency Medicine Week.

In Witness Whereof I have hereunto set my hand this third day of October, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and ninth.

RONALD REAGAN