Surgeon Commander Sharpley joined the Royal Navy in 1987. Having graduated from Cambridge University, in 1989, and then completed house jobs, he worked as a General Duty Medical Officer, working at the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines, Lympstone for a few months and then on 3 six month deployments on frigates, and finally in general practice at Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose. In 1994 he started training in psychiatry.

Appointed consultant psychiatrist in 2001, he works in the Department of Community Mental Health, HM Naval Base, Portsmouth.

He deployed with the Primary Casualty Receiving Facility on RFA Argus during the Iraq War, leading a mental health team providing mental health services to the Amphibious Task Force. He has written publications on substance misuse audit, pre-operational stress briefing, self harm and the history of naval mental health services. He became adviser in psychiatry to the Navy Command in 2003. He has conducted psychiatric visits to our Forces operating in Afghanistan between November 2007 and February 2009.