During her tenure, she grew to take her work more seriously, becoming a ward sister and accepting more personal responsibilities by adopting her half-niece Mia (Jada Wallace-Mitchell).

A tart with a heart character, Donna had many romantic liaisons with her colleagues, including a one-night stand with midwife Mickie Hendrie (Kelly Adams).

She ultimately fell in love with agency nurse Kieran Callaghan (Barry Sloane), and departed to be with him after he was injured in Afghanistan as part of the Territorial Army.

Donna arrives at Holby City Hospital as a staff nurse on the general surgery ward, making a poor first impression by being disorganised and insolent.

Mistakenly believing that living with her superior will ensure her an easy time at work, Donna invites herself to move in with nurse Lisa Fox (Luisa Bradshaw-White).

[1] The two have a strained relationship: within weeks, Donna is evicted for falling behind on her rent,[2] and when she is later allowed to move back in, she lets bailiffs take Lisa's possessions after failing to keep up her own loan repayments.

[3] Forced to run a shift in charge of the hospital's Acute Assessment Unit as recompense, Donna struggles to manage and learns a new respect for Lisa.

[7] Following a short-lived relationship with physiotherapist Justin Fuller (Ben Richards),[8] Donna moves on to date hospital manager Bradley Hume (Scott Adkins).

[19] Donna falls in love with agency nurse Kieran Callaghan (Barry Sloane), and is devastated when he is called to serve in Afghanistan with the Territorial Army (TA).

A BBC documentary entitled Making It at Holby chronicled their casting process, which entailed seven weeks of auditions, including group workshops to allow the series producers to gauge candidates' personalities.

[36] The website also highlighted her determination to "live life to the full",[34] her fun-loving and straight-talking nature, bravery, honesty and loyalty,[35] and the fact that "her heart's in the right place.

[39] Ultimately, adopting her half-niece Mia forced Donna to grow up, focussing on her career by attaining promotion to ward sister and accepting the resultant responsibilities.

[35] Reflecting on Donna's development in January 2011, Jacobs observed that she had changed a great deal from her early days, when she was used as a comical character with "bumbling one-liners", into a serious, more responsible person.

[46] Reflecting on Donna's character development between leaving and returning, Jacobs commented, "Before she was a girl in her 20s who was very focused on love and men, and now she has two children so her life is a lot more child-focused.

"[49] Producers Diana Kyle and Tony McHale intended the storyline to reveal a new side to Donna, depicting her attempting to cope, in contrast to the "smiling party girl" viewers were familiar with.

[30] Her love interests included physiotherapist Justin Fuller, registrars Ed Keating (Rocky Marshall) and Mubbs Hussein (Ian Aspinall), manager Bradley Hume, senior house officer Sean Thompson (Chinna Wodu),[36] and a love triangle with married consultant Michael Spence and his cardiothoracic colleague Connie Beauchamp (Amanda Mealing).

[39] He treated her badly, to the point that he would only have sex with her in a toilet stall;[57] nonetheless Jacobs assessed that Donna was in love with him, believing him to be "the one" and different from her previous lovers, branding her deluded in this respect.

[39] In a November 2007 article for the Daily Mirror, television critic Jim Shelley described Donna as a "nymphomaniac", though qualified his comment with the addendum "to be fair, sex addiction is a job requirement in Holby.

[60] She was dubbed "man crazy" by Tina Miles of the Liverpool Echo,[61] and "shameless" by the Mirror's Clare Raymond, who noted that she would "stop at nothing to snare a rich doctor".

[38] Despite her numerous sex scenes, Donna did not have a genuinely romantic storyline until beginning a slow-burning romance with agency nurse Kieran Callaghan in late 2010.

Sloane felt that Kieran did not sufficiently explain the extent of his involvement with the TA, and assessed that Donna failed to understand his "soldier mentality", stating that their problems stemmed from a mutual stubbornness.

[66] She reappears in the fourth edition of Casualty@Holby City, originally broadcast in December 2005, when she is involved in a car crash en route to the staff Christmas party.

[71] The thirteenth series saw the departure of many regular cast members,[72] and the arrival of a group of new ones, including Guy Henry,[73] Laila Rouass,[74] and Jimmy Akingbola.

Writers included scenes of Donna deliberating her decision to leave the NHS with Bernie Wolfe (Jemma Redgrave), who was guest starring in an episode.

[91] Discussing public reaction to her character, Jacobs stated that real nurses enjoyed her "man-eating antics", and were envious that Donna got away with wearing so much make-up.

"[38] In the aftermath of the Donna/Mickie storyline, the BBC banned its actresses from appearing in raunchy photo-shoots, after Jacobs and Adams were photographed in intimate poses while dressed in nurses uniforms for various "lads' mags".

[97] The following year, What's on TV named Donna one of their favourite characters, praising her for taking a stance against Director of Surgery Henrik Hanssen (Guy Henry) in defence of her fellow nurses.

In an editorial discussing the boundaries between fiction and reality, The Guardian's Scott Murray and Barney Ronay declared their love for Donna, commending the way she "always has time for people" and recommending that she stay away from Michael as she deserves better.

"[100] Simon criticized Donna for failing to observe correct organ donation protocol in an attempt to win Michael's affection, commenting that she had "thrown her own heart willynilly at the first good-looking doctor she s[aw] with an ego the size of Texas.

[105] Many regional newspapers named "Promises", in which she decides to adopt Mia, a "pick of the day",[106] and Sarah Morgan of the Daily Record cited Jacobs' appearance as Donna in the premiere episode of Casualty's twenty-fifth series as a positive example of the BBC "pull[ing] out all the stops to make sure the first edition in this latest run is something of a cracker.