To assist you with drafting a proclamation, here is a sample letter and proclamation language you may use:
RE: Showing Healthcare Heroes Our Appreciation
Dear Mayor/Commissioner, etc. FILL IN THE BLANK,
We are joining The Healthcare Rest Stop (www.HealthcareRestStop.com) in respectfully requesting that the City of/County of FILL IN THE BLANK consider officially proclaiming November 15, 2022, as Healthcare Worker Wellbeing Day, part of Healthcare Worker Wellbeing Month, which we would like to establish as an annual observance every November.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation’s healthcare professionals were under siege by long workdays in institutions that were chronically short-staffed and under-resourced. The SARS-Co-V2 outbreak severely taxed facilities in all delivery sectors across the healthcare continuum, forcing our national workforce to care for patients with a then-unfamiliar contagious disease, without proper personal protective equipment and lacking the essentials to deliver quality patient care due to massive disruptions in the national and global supply chain.
Frontline healthcare workers set aside their own fears and jeopardized their personal health to care for large populations of sick patients in overrun hospitals for two years while they, public health experts and governments worked together to address this global crisis. These healthcare heroes who have watched patients die and their peers succumb to the pandemic have suffered immense amounts of stress which have evolved into burnout and even moral distress. This has triggered an exodus of healthcare personnel from the workforce, with the American Hospital Association and others predicting the loss of one-third of healthcare professionals from the field within the next year.
Public and private sectors, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, are recognizing that this exodus must be arrested, and systems and programs put in place to address this widespread burnout and the disastrous effects this will have on patient health and safety. In recognition of these efforts and with a goal of raising awareness of the need for partnerships, we suggest that the City of/County of FILL IN THE BLANK can play a critical role in making Healthcare Worker Wellbeing Day and Healthcare Worker Wellbeing Month an annual event to promote these observances and drive real and lasting improvement in the lives of the healthcare heroes in our communities and the nation’s 20 million healthcare workers.
Respectfully,
FILL IN THE BLANK WITH YOUR NAME, TITLE, HEALTHCARE INSTITUTION, ETC.