Dr Elaine Palmer

Miss Palmer is a Consultant Gynaecologist who provides specialist vulva and advanced menopause care both within the NHS and in the private sector.
Her unique chatty, empathetic and personable consultation style, reflects Miss Palmer’s proud Welsh heritage and her belief that good communication and listening-to everyones individual story, is key to optimising her patients health and wellbeing.

After completing A-Levels, which included not only the ‘usual’ science subjects, but also ‘ethics, religion and philosophy, “for interest and to quench her thirst for alternative knowledge”, Miss Palmer moved from her hometown in Wales to London to complete her Medical Student training at Imperial College. Here she gained a BSc with first degree honours in addition to her Batchelor of Medicine and Surgery Degrees.

Miss Palmer went on to train and specialise in Obstetrics and Gynaecology within the North West Thames Region of the London Deanery. This included training at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Trust and its sister site West Middlesex University Hospital, St Mary’s Hopsital Paddington and Queen Charlottes and Chelsea Hospital London. Within each of these units she was mentored by the same renowned clinicians that she had encountered in Medical School, and with whom she still now has the priveledge of working and collaborating with in both the NHS and Private Sector.

Vulva Care
Following completion of her general gynaecological and obstetric training, uniquely amongst most other trainees, Miss Palmer undertook Advanced Specialist Training in Vulval Disease, an area of healthcare that is usually not particularly popular and only taught-about in certain hospitals. Miss Palmer, however, became passionate about this specilaity early on in her training-years, as she could see how life changing individualised care in this area could be, and how ongoing education and research in this field of medicine was vital.
This was, because, in her opinion, issues with our genitals and the skin “down-there” are suffered by most of us, and sadly more often than not, this area is overlooked, “sat-on and suffered in silence”, or not-understood and feared by most physicians, causing significant quality of life issues.
To achieve her goal of improving care of the vulva, Miss Palmer not only followed the advanced sub-speciality training curriculum, but also developed her own training goals, studying alongside dermatology, histopathology, plastic surgery, colorectal surgery and sexual health teams, consistently focusing on persuing expertise in vulval disease management.
Ultimately this led to Miss Palmer becoming one of only seventeen gynaecologists in the UK who completed advanced training in this field around ten years ago and she remains just as passionate about vulva healthcare now, as she did then.
Miss Palmer is currently proud to be the Lead Vulval Gynaecologist at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust and works closely within a specialist multidisciplinary team providing care to London residents and those referred from the rest of the UK.
She is the North West London, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) Vulval Training Preceptor overseeing speciality training in vulval care.
She is also the Lead Gynaecologist for the Chelsea Ano-Genital Neoplasia Service (CANS), working towards unique, individualised and streamlined care (medical, surgical, laser and oncological) for those with pre-cancerous conditions, including high grade intraepithelial lesions and multi-zonal HPV (Human Papilloma Virus) of the vulva, vagina cervix, and anal area.

Menopause
From a menopause perspective, after recognising the major overlap that this area of healthcare had with vulval-vaginal disease, Miss Palmer took great interest in peri and post reproductive health and the significant impact hormonal issues can have on a person’s quality of life.
Miss Palmer became an active member of the British Menopause Society (BMS), completed advanced training in this area and then gained BMS Advanced Menopause Specialist Status just before she became a consultant. Two years later she gained BMS Principal Menopause Trainer Status and now works for both the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (FSRH) and BMS, training those wishing to learn or specialise in menopause care including, RCOG trainees, nurses and allied health professionals, as well as running her own menopause clinics privately and in the NHS.

Education & Obstetrics:
In the NHS, alongside her specialist clinics, Miss Palmer still provides an on-call obstetric role, delivering babies “into the small hours,” still enjoying helping to bring new life into the world just as she did when she was a trainee.
In addition to teaching about menopause and vulval issues, Miss Palmer remains an avid education enthusiast, keen to provide good training for medical students ready for their transition to fully fledged doctors of the future. To this end, since 2009, she has been an Honorary Clinical Lecturer for Imperial College London, and of note, in her NHS Lead role as the Joint Site Lead for Undergraduate Obstetric and Gynaecological (O&G) Education for Imperial College Students at Chelsea and Westminster’s West Middlesex University Hospital site, Miss Palmer was recently awarded the Top Consultant Teaching Undergraduate Award for 2024, for which she was emotional and exceptionally proud to receive.
Life and Passion:
Both within and outside of her career, Miss Palmer remains friendly, emotionally perceptive, loyal, caring and family orientated.
She has an ardent passion for sketching, art, painting, and colours in nature. Attributes, which she is sure, help her with her innate pattern recognition abilities, surgical skills and the human interaction and life-skills needed to work within the complex specialism of vulval skin care and hormonal fluctuations.