Anaesthetists and intensivists recognised in the King’s Birthday Honours 2025

Published: 14/06/2025

Congratulations to members of the Royal College of Anaesthetists and the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine recognised in the King's Birthday Honours.  

This recognition of our colleagues for their services to the NHS and their specialties is richly deserved. Congratulations to everyone who has been honoured, including our members listed below.  

Officers of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)

  • Carole Mary Boulanger, Consultant Nurse and Advanced Critical Care Practitioner, Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, and Board Member of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine (FICM). Awarded an OBE for services to critical care.

Carole Boulanger was the first Advanced Critical Care Practitioner (ACCP) in the UK and has been a pioneer and champion for the profession throughout her career. 

Carole founded both the National Association of Advanced Critical Care Practitioners and the annual National ACCP conference to promote education and research. She developed the National Competency Framework for ACCPs and later  brought the programme under the governance of FICM.   

Carole’s pioneering development and leadership of the ACCP role has had immense impact on the quality of care of critically ill patients and their families, particularly during the pandemic. She was awarded Honorary Fellowship of FICM in 2018 and the Society Medal of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine in 2020, the highest award the ESICM can bestow. 

  • Professor Fang Gao Smith, FMedSci., Professor of Anaesthesia, Critical Care and Pain, University of Birmingham and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. Awarded an OBE for services to anaesthesia.

Fang Gao-Smith has contributed to improvements in patient outcomes in the UK and internationally through her innovative research, strategic collaborations, teaching, and front-line patient care in anaesthesia, intensive care medicine and pain medicine.

Fang’s portfolio of research collaborations has influenced practice in the UK and internationally, including the care of critically ill patients, maternal-controlled pain relief for childbirth and novel pain control techniques following surgery or trauma. 

Among many other achievements, Fang was instrumental in the creation of the National Institute for Academic Anaesthesia (NIAA) and in 2024 was the first female anaesthetist to be elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She is also an FRCA and FFICM examiner. 

Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE)

  • Dr John Bernard Carlisle, Consultant Anaesthetist, Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust. Awarded an MBE for services to medicine and patient care.

Early in his anaesthetic career, John Carlisle recognised the importance of good preoperative assessment and patient risk calculation and founded the multidisciplinary Preoperative Society, serving as its first President. His pioneering work includes development of a model to calculate an individual risk prediction for complex surgery that is widely used by anaesthetists in the UK and worldwide. 

John’s other achievements include the design of a statistical tool to detect fabricated research data. This tool has been widely adopted by top scientific journals to screen submissions of randomised controlled trials before acceptance for publication. Known as the ‘Carlisle method’, John’s methodology has transformed the way journals, institutions and research groups check the validity of data.

Medallist of the Order of the British Empire (BEM)

  • Dr Christopher Goddard, Consultant in Anaesthetics and Intensive Care, Mersey and West Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. Awarded a BEM for services to the community in Merseyside.