Proclamation 5773

By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation

For the last century, visiting nurse associations have sent skilled and dedicated nurses to care for homebound patients throughout our country. Today, approximately 20,000 nurses in nearly 500 associations care each year for nearly a million Americans, adults and children alike. This tradition of caring service has provided indispensable help to countless people and has truly earned visiting nurses the gratitude and the esteem of their countrymen.

Visiting nurse associations have won great professional respect as well for their adherence to the highest standards in offering personalized home health care. Visiting nurses often work under adverse conditions and at personal sacrifice, working long hours and traveling great distances to minister to the sick at home and to teach people sound health practices.

The contributions of visiting nurses also help community health services meet today's demand for nursing. Patients released from acute care institutions, the chronically ill, and the physically and mentally handicapped all receive the many benefits of visiting nurses' care and services.

Many volunteers assist the work of visiting nurse associations, serving on boards of directors and offering every kind of support, from visiting patients to staffing offices to delivering meals on wheels.

The activities of visiting nurses and those who support their fine work deserve our praise, thanks, and encouragement, now and always.

The Congress, by Public Law 100-246, has designated the period of February 21 through February 27, 1988, as "National Visiting Nurse Associations Week" and has authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation in observance of this week.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the period of February 21 through February 27, 1988, as National Visiting Nurse Associations Week. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this week with appropriate ceremonies and activities in support of America's visiting nurses and their reverence and respect for the worth and the dignity of the patients for whom they care.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this seventeenth day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twelfth.

RONALD REAGAN

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 11:22 a.m., February 18, 1988]