Being an optometrist wasn’t part of the masterplan,” Sharon Beatty MCOptom laughs. “I was in secondary school and I found I couldn’t read the blackboard. I went to my local optometrist and I was fascinated by the eye exam. Then the optometrist offered me a Saturday job, and the rest is history.”

For Sharon, that history is very much still being written. After 25 years in full-time practice, she became Training Manager for the Eye Health Examination Wales service and then Chair of the South East Wales Regional Optical Committee (SEWROC), working with Cardiff and Vale University Health Board (UHB) to establish pilot glaucoma community services in collaboration with local practices and primary and secondary care teams.