Miss Rachel O’Donnell is head of department and a consultant gynaeoncologist at the Royal Victory Infirmary with a special interest in diagnosis and treatment of gynaecological cancers. Rachel is MDT lead and leads the gynaecology oncology services, which are based within the dedicated women’s health unit. She works alongside the consultant and advanced nursing practitioner teams, offering specialist outpatient diagnostics and therapeutics, incorporating advanced technologies for scanning, hysteroscopy, colposcopy and minor outpatient operative procedures.
Surgically Rachel undertakes advanced open and minimally invasive surgery and coordinates multidisciplinary surgery with colorectal, sarcoma, urology and plastic surgery teams.
She runs the regional specialist vulval clinic providing specialist multidisciplinary care for women with complex benign, premalignant and cancerous vulval conditions and is also the gynae lead for the regional sarcoma MDT.
Education and training
Rachel graduated from Edinburgh Medical School in 2005 and completed obstetrics and gynaecology training in Edinburgh before undertaking a Fellowship at the Northern Gynaecological Oncology Centre (NGOC). Rachel went on to complete her PhD in translational ovarian cancer research in 2016 and was awarded a NIHR Clinical Lectureship 2016-2020.
Medical education
Rachel is passionate about education and contributes to local, regional and national training recognised through her national RCOG National Trainer of the year award 2025.
Rachel is a senior clinical tutor for the Newcastle Local Education Programme (LEP) for Newcastle University and is the Undergraduate Medical Education Quality Lead as well as contributing to the Pastoral service. She contributes formally to under- and post-graduate teaching and additionally holds supervisory roles within the Masters of Research (MRes) and MBBS courses.
Research
Rachel is a core member of the GynaeOncology Research Group at Newcastle University’s Translational and Clinical research Institute and supervises Doctorate and Masters students. She has both wet-lab and clinical research studies in progress and welcomes motivated students and clinicians to get in touch by email if interested in joining this work.
You can read more about Rachel’s research and academic activity on the Newcastle University website.
