Doctor Nick Burnette

Dr Nick Burnette is a plain-spoken Doctor who can sometimes come across as quite blunt. He is similar in personality to Dr Mike Banner, who was an anaesthetist and GP at Saint Aidens Royal Free Hospital before him.

He first appeared in The Royal in the episode Against All Odds. It is here that he meets Nurse Marian McKaig, in a train carriage talking to a preist before the train de-rails. At first Marian seems quite unimpressed with him, and when first talking to him does not know that he is the replacement for Dr Mike Banner, whom she had hoped to date.

Later when treating people who had been wounded by the train crash, Marian discovers that Nick is in fact a doctor and together they work together to treat people who had been injured.

Throughout the series, he and Marian become close. He invites her to his apartment to discuss their future. During this dinner he suggests that she moves out of the nurses home and into his appartment with him. He thinks this to be a good idea but she feels insulted by the offer as she is a Catholic and she leaves his apartment before finishing the dinner.

They further disagree in that same episode, when he tells her that he is going to break the news to a patient the her newly born baby might be lead poisoned. Marian then criticizes him for this, telling him that the new mother is exhausted and exhilarated and he should know better than to give her such bad news at such a time. She walks away telling him that there is more he needs to learn about people, especially women.

Nick also finds himself in disagreement with Doctor Jill Weatherall, after she asks him what he thinks the Middleditch bequest should be used for. She tells him that she feels a new Premature Baby Unit would be more beneficial than a new General Ward. He tells her that he thinks that she is not objective enough to make a judgement, and tells her he is aware of her past problems, being that not so long ago she lost a baby of her own. He suggests that what happened to her is still so raw in her mind that her determination to push that Premature Baby Unit is connected to her own experiences. She later agrees that there is some truth to what Nick had said, and agrees with her husband that a new General Ward should be built.

Later, in the first episode of the eighth series it is discovered that he and Marain McKaig eloped to get married.