Proclamation 5494—Critical Care Week, 1986

Critical care medicine is a newly defined term that describes a category of medical treatments for patients who are in life threatening situations and require immediate care. Coronary, respiratory, neonatal, trauma, and intensive care units are elements of critical care medicine. Patients may need such critical care after auto or boat accidents, heart attack, stroke, industrial injuries, or as a result of premature birth.

Critical care units, where they are available, often serve as many as 15 percent of a hospital's in-patients. Approximately 4,300 critical care units have already been established in the United States.

Public awareness of the special medical needs of the critically ill is important if America is to maintain its preeminence in the development and spread of medical advances in the area of critical care. Patients such as trauma and burn victims, AIDS victims, and postoperative patients with complications need critical care units within hospitals, and America needs the progress in treatment strategies these units and the professionals who staff them accomplish. The Society of Critical Care Medicine and its members throughout the United States are dedicated to improving the care of critically ill patients through research and education.

In order to increase public awareness of the importance of critical care medicine, the Congress, by House Joint Resolution 526, has designated the week beginning May 25 through May 31, 1986, as "Critical Care Week" and authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of this event.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week beginning May 25 through May 31, 1986, as Critical Care Week. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this event with appropriate ceremonies and activities.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this 25th day of May, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and tenth.

RONALD REAGAN