Medicine has been Charlotte's passion since she was a teenager. She was inspired to become a doctor after a teacher at school encouraged her to move beyond her family's low expectations and do something with her life. Her family is loving and supportive but not geared to academic pursuits. In many ways, Charlotte feels like the black sheep of her family - she's so different from the others. She has two brothers, who have trades like their father - one is a carpenter, the other an electrician. Her sister married young and started a family after a short stint as a receptionist.

In the end, the real thing that divides her from her family is not her career but her sexual preference. Although previously married to Vincent Hughes, whom she met during her university days, Charlotte revealed to him and her family that she is gay.

Charlotte moved through university easily and without fuss. She's an excellent doctor and had no trouble balancing the fine line between fear and overconfidence throughout her internship. She takes a fairly no-nonsense attitude to life and her work, but is a caring and compassionate doctor - sometimes too empathetic to the life and death struggles she witnesses.

Feeling for the first time that she is where she needs to be, Charlotte has re-examined her life. She has taken on a Training Fellowship in the ED and has revisited her desire to have a child. But like most things in Charlotte's life, she approaches the subject like a bull at a gate and the decisions she makes will affect her and those around her profoundly.

Dr Charlotte Beaumont is played by Tammy MacIntosh