City Endocrinology Nurse receives Special Recognition Award from the ESE

Dr Sofia Llahana has been awarded the Special Recognition Award from the European Society for Endocrinology (ESE) for her dedication and leadership in advancing Endocrinology Nursing in Europe.

Reflecting on the award and her success, Dr Llahana, Senior Lecturer in Advanced Nursing Practice at City’s School of Health & Psychological Sciences said:

This award recognises practitioners who make a substantial contribution to the field of Endocrinology, and I am especially proud to have been the first nurse in the world to have received such an award. This award is reflection of the collective effort of my nurse colleagues in the past few years to raise the profile of Endocrinology Nursing and to gain an equal seat around the multidisciplinary table; I am very honoured to have been their leader in this journey."

Watch Dr Llahana's online acceptance speech:

Dr Llahana was the first Consultant Nurse in Endocrinology in the UK appointed in 2010, and joined City in 2018.

She is Lead Editor of the Advanced Practice in Endocrinology Nursing, the only available textbook in Endocrinology Nursing, first published by Springer in 2019, and which includes 69 chapters written by an international multidisciplinary team of 118 authors.

The book was downloaded almost 75,000 times within its first two years of publication and has been adopted as a reference manual for most training and academic curriculums in the field internationally.

Earlier this year, Dr Llahana was also successful in attaining a three-year HEE/NIHR ICA Post-doctoral Clinical Lectureship award for her academic work at City.

She is currently the Chief Investigator of an international study aiming to investigate barriers and enablers in the self-management of patients with adrenal insufficiency, with the objective of developing an evidence-based Position Statement for patient education and standards of service delivery for adrenal insufficiency.

Dr Llahana also supports and mentors Endocrine Nurse colleagues in the UK, and internationally, to undertake research or participate in collaborative studies in the field. Her students are currently conducting research projects focused on topics such as hypopituitarism, adrenal insufficiency and quality of life in patients with Klinefelter Syndrome.