One of the recipients of this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours is NHS Forth Valley’s Deputy Nurse Director, Rita Ciccu Moore, who has been awarded an MBE for services to nursing and to the NHS Forth Valley Nurses Choir.

Rita has worked for the health service for more than 40 years and began her nursing career in the former Stirling Royal Infirmary. After an intensive care course in Glasgow, which took in the cardiac intensive care unit, coronary care and orthopaedics, she returned a promoted post based at Stirling Royal Infirmary’s Queen Elizabeth Wing. In 1994 she became a charge nurse in theatre recovery and a pain specialist nurse. A subsequent move to management in intensive care, initially for a two week period, led to Rita’s current career path.

Moving to the former Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary, she oversaw the merger of the intensive care departments into one department at Stirling, and undertook other professional leadership posts before being appointed to her current role as Deputy Nurse Director for NHS Forth Valley.

Rita also founded NHS Forth Valley’s popular Nurses Choir which has performed in a wide range of venues across Scotland and beyond including hospitals, churches, care homes, the Scottish Parliament and the RCN Congress in Glasgow. As well as entertaining patients, politicians and members of the public, the Choir has raised in excess of £10,000 for a range of charities and good causes including the annual BBC’s Children in Need appeal.

Under Rita’s stewardship, the NHS Forth Valley Nurses Choir has gone from strength to strength with a musical director in place and a growing membership which has expanded from 12 to 27. The decision to wear uniforms was taken to represent nursing as a profession and members received national recognition when the Choir appeared as the surprise guests on Michael MacIntyre’s Big Show.

Commented on her award Rita said: “Recognition like this can only enhance the profile of our caring profession. Nurses are proud of what they do, working together as a team to enhance the care offered to parents and families. On a personal basis I am both humbled and overwhelmed to become an MBE – it is the icing on the cake of a long career in nursing.”