Sahira Shah is a fictional character from the BBC medical drama Holby City, played by actress Laila Rouass.

The character's main relationships were with Hanssen, a friendship with registrar Greg Douglas (Edward MacLiam) and a feud with consultant cardiothoracic surgeon Jac Naylor (Rosie Marcel).

Having taken time out from her career to have two children, she is assigned a mentor – a reluctant Jac Naylor (Rosie Marcel), who sees her as a potential rival.

[1] It emerges that Sahira took the job at the behest of Director of Surgery Henrik Hanssen (Guy Henry), who she worked under at three previous hospitals.

Tasked with managing budget cuts, Hanssen is looking to make staff redundancies, and asks Sahira to report to him on the capability of registrar Greg Douglas (Edward MacLiam).

He suggests that she is incapable of balancing her personal and professional life, but feels guilty when Sahira subsequently struggles in an operation and is berated by Hanssen.

He offers to remove the warning from her file, and convinces her to join him in an operation she has never performed before, but is forced to call Greg in to assist when she panics in theatre.

Sahira comes up with an idea for a mobile cardiac unit, which Jac gives her consultant backing to, but double-crosses her by signing a contract with plastic surgeon Michael Spence (Hari Dhillon), whose department is encroaching on Darwin.

[11] Sweet as cupcakes but with a rod of steel running through her, this twenty first century woman strives for nothing less than perfection in every facet of her life- Sahira is a loyal wife, a loving mother and a brilliant surgeon with a rare gift for surgery.

[14] Rouass and executive producer Belinda Campbell hoped that viewers would be able to identify with Sahira: the former deemed her situation "a reflection on what millions of women are going through now",[15] and the latter said that she had been "a joy to create".

Campbell added that while Sahira appeared "cool and calm", in reality she was "kicking madly just to keep afloat" and had created a "façade of perfection" around herself.

[20] After she completed filming on the ITV programme Primeval, Rouass told her agent that the only show she would sign a long-term contract with was Holby City, as she believed it to be "so understated in the most positive sense."

It was important to Rouass that she loved her character before signing, and explained that if she could not connect with Sahira and was not passionate about creating her, then she feared the role would become just another job.

[15] When asked whether she had much input into the character or storylines, Rouass explained that she had been given a questionnaire to gauge her opinion of Sahira's backstory, and that the creative team were receptive to suggestions.

[21] She called the rivalry a highlight of Sahira's early storylines, noting that the "bitchy, catty comments [gave] it a fun element.

"[26] Rouass explained that although Jac was threatened by Sahira's presence, a mutual – albeit silent – respect developed as a result of their shared profession.

[18] Though Jac had had antagonistic relationships with many of her colleagues beforehand, Katy Moon of Inside Soap assessed that she may have "met her match" in Sahira when the two competed for a cardiothoracic consultancy.

[28] In October 2010, prior to Sahira's arrival, Guy Henry revealed that his character Hanssen would be mentoring a female doctor and their partnership would carry a "hint of unrequited love.

[33] She hoped that Sahira would become involved in a love triangle as she found many of the male cast members "really dishy",[26] and noted that being married has "never stopped anyone.

[21] In June 2011, Craig-Brown stated that a central focus of series thirteen had been establishing Sahira's character and developing a triangle between herself, Greg and Hanssen.

She said that this would bring the two closer together, but qualified, "I don't want it to be a conventional soap or serial drama story about a woman who has an affair, because I think it's not as simple as that.

[37] Sahira returns in the show's 1045th episode, broadcast on 10 February 2021, when she is hired as the new clinical lead of Darwin, the hospital's cardiothoracic ward.

[42] Writers integrated Sahira into the unit of characters featured on Darwin ward, including consultant Kian Madani (Ramin Karimloo), registrar Chloe Godard (Amy Lennox) and junior doctor Nicky McKendrick (Belinda Owusu).

It is revealed that Sahira's father, Reyhan Shah (Raad Rawi), had sexually abused Hanssen while teaching him at boarding school.

She struggles to diagnose her father and asks Hanssen for his opinion but when he suggests that Reyhan is self-harming to avoid trial, Sahira rejects the idea.

[60] "Blue Valentine", the episode in which Sahira was introduced, was selected as recommended viewing by the Liverpool Daily Post and Sunday Mercury.

"[14] The Daily Mirror's Jane Simon approved of the Sahira/Jac double-act, and commented, "Watching Sahira (sweet, maternal, human) and Jac (a Dalek in scrubs) hilariously lobbing insults at each other is to witness the start of a beautiful hatred and the scriptwriters are guaranteed to have a lot of fun writing for these two.

[69] While columnist Joanne Lowles named Sahira's final episode as a four star rated "TV Highlight" that was "memorable for all the wrong reasons".

She added that it "was a shame" to see Sahira depart because Rouass had played her "brilliantly"; describing her exit scenes as a "disastrous final surgery and a predictable huge bust-up with Hanssen".

[70] Sue Haasler, a critic at the Metro, praised the historic abuse plot and called Reyhan's death "another shock twist in what has been a harrowing and emotional story".