A nurse who stole a blue badge from a parked car and used it to park in a hospital's disabled bay has been struck off the register.

Joe Debrah took the badge when he spotted the victim's car with its window wound down at Maidstone Hospital in October 2015.

Days later the 47-year-old agency nurse used it so he could park his own car in a space at Pembury Hospital.

During a misconduct hearing the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard Debrah had failed to notify his new employer, Interact Medical, of ongoing criminal proceedings on his application.

Debrah had been convicted of theft and fraud by false representation at a magistrates court in September 2016 and was sentenced to a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £30 in compensation.

He claimed that he believed the conviction was a spent one and thought it would have been picked up during DBS checks as he looked to land a job with Interact Medical.

Debrah, who registered as a nurse in 2005, was struck off after a panel found his actions to have amounted to misconduct.

He was also found to have inappropriately administered medication to a patient at Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust and he also failed to flush a cannula before or after administering an unknown substance in January 2017.

A report following the conclusion of the hearing read: "The panel found that it is indefensible to steal a disabled person’s parking badge and display it in your own car for the sole purpose of getting free and/or accessible parking.

"The panel concluded that to say that this incident was not linked to your clinical practice would be incorrect as the theft took place in a hospital car park from a vulnerable person and was displayed in another hospital car park.

"It was in no doubt that this is a breach of the fundamental tenets of nursing and amounts to serious misconduct."