CEO Message: National Hospital Week 2021
Editor’s note: May 9-15 is National Hospital Week. In this column, Bill Robertson shares his gratitude with MultiCare’s hospital teams.
While I’m not quite ready to suggest that it become the MultiCare theme song, I do think there is some merit in incorporating “Here Comes the Sun” into the organization’s playlist. Those lyrics, “It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter,” summarize our shared journey through the pandemic. And when The Beatles sing, “Here comes the sun, and I say it’s all right,” I confess that is how it feels to come out of these dark days, and I wholeheartedly endorse the sentiment.
Our hospitals have been the source of hope and help through the whole dark journey — open through long, difficult days and nights, staffed with committed teams doing their jobs, the bulwark from which we confronted an unprecedented challenge. It is not exaggerating when we describe hospitals as indispensable community assets, providing critical support for the entire nation as we have slowly made our way through the COVID-19 crisis. To think of hospitals as essential — like the sun is essential — has never felt more appropriate.
It was in response to the last global pandemic — the outbreak of the Spanish flu in 1918 — that a National Hospital Day was first celebrated, exactly 100 years ago in 1921. Since 1953, the celebration of the essential contribution that hospitals make to our society has been commemorated over an entire week. Across the decades, National Hospital Week has presented an annual opportunity to say thank you to health care workers. This year, 2021, that recognition is more important than ever.
Thank you — each of you! Thank you to every team, and each team member at the hospitals and beyond who contributed to successfully taking care of our communities. Thank you for how you have continued to serve — as faithfully as the sunrise, even in the darkest and most difficult circumstances. Thank you for sharing in the hope and anticipation of returning to post-pandemic life and for your willingness to be a part of that portion of the journey, too.
Your commitment and courage inspire us, but this is not a column about how we feel — it is really about what you have done and continue to do. Like the song suggests, because of you we see “the smiles returning to the faces …. It feels like years since it’s been here.”
Here comes the sun. If you hear me humming that song, you’re probably the reason why. Thank you!
