Dr Paul Hughes is a highly experienced and very well-known ophthalmologist. With over 40 years of experience, he was one of the first ophthalmologists who set up his own Day Surgery and managed it very successfully. In recent years, Dr Hughes has focused his career on general ophthalmology.

Dr Hughes earned a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery at University of New South Wales and completed his ophthalmology training at Guy's Hospital and St Mary's Hospital in London, UK. During his impressive career, Dr Hughes has been instrumental in improving ophthalmic practices in Australia and globally. He has many 'firsts' attached to his name including:

• He was one of the first ophthalmologists from Australia to travel to the US to train in the radial keratotomy technique in the 1980s;
• performing the first radial Keratomy procedure in Australia in 1983;
• the first surgeons in Australia to use the excimer laser for vision correction in 1994 and was a member of the prestigious Erlangen Research Development world clinical group involved in the development of the Wavelight Laser and its multiple platforms.

Dr Hughes has frequently appeared on national radio and television and has published many articles in peer-reviewed journals. He was involved in collecting data for the largest published series of laser-assisted cataract surgeries performed in the world. This data demonstrated that using laser technology during cataract surgery is safer and more precise than manual technology.

Dr Hughes has been serving the Illawarra community for over 5 years, a place where he first worked in the early 1970s.