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 the NHS Forth Valley Nurses Choir.
Rita has worked for the health service for more than 40 years and founded the Nurses Choir. Once a musical director was in place, the number of members expanded from 12 to the current 27. The decision to wear uniforms was taken to represent nursing as a profession and the choir, which has performed in community hospitals, churches and care homes, the Scottish Parliament, RCN Congress as well as in Forth Valley Royal Hospital, has raised in excess of £10,000 for charities and good causes. The choir were also surprise guests on the Michael MacIntyre Show and took part in BBC Children in Need.
Rita’s other hat – her nursing career – began in Stirling Royal Infirmary. After an intensive care course in Glasgow which took in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, Coronary Care and Orthopaedics, it was back to Stirling Royal and the Queen Elizabeth Wing to a promoted post. In 1994, she became a charge nurse in Theatre Recovery and a pain specialist nurse. A subsequent move to management in intensive care, ostensibly for a two week stint, led to Rita’s current career path. Moving to 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.
Rita says she is both overwhelmed and humbled by news of her award.
