A FORMER Huddersfield man who worked as a male nurse with mentally ill children and adolescents has been struck off.

A disciplinary hearing took the action after hearing that Robert Rowlands discussed with a student nurse his experience of oral sex.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council, meeting in London, also found Rowlands, 45, of misconduct for telling another colleague while at work at a unit at Oakham House, Leicester, explicit details of his relationship with his wife.

However, the council's conduct and competence committee ruled that comments he made about being attracted to a 15-year-old girl patient and asking a woman colleague if she watched porn films with her husband did not amount to misconduct.

Committee chairwoman Mrs Kathy McLean said: "We have taken into account that the matters complained of took place in a unit providing care for young and vulnerable patients, a number of whom had already been adversely affected by sexual abuse.

"In our judgement a nurse with any insight ought to have been particularly careful in respect of the need for discretion regarding sexual issues.

"He does not seem to appreciate that by upsetting other members of the team he could have indirectly compromised the welfare of those clients."

Rowlands, a D-grade nurse at Oakham House in-patient unit, did not attend the hearing and was not represented.

He had admitted four allegations of making inappropriate comments of a sexual nature while on duty between February, 2002, and October, 2003.

Miss Clare Strickland, for the council, told the hearing that the unit where Mr Rowlands worked contained young people aged 13 to 19, some of whom had been victims of sexual abuse.

She said staff had to maintain professional boundaries.

Miss Strickland said Rowlands had told a colleague he was attracted to a 15-year-old patient and that he was "shy and nervous" around the girl. This conversation had been reported.

Later he was said to have been heard talking on the telephone to the teenager for about an hour in what was described as a "secretive and personal" manner. As a result he was asked to take sick leave.

But when he returned he was said to have become flirtatious, later upsetting a healthcare support worker by saying to her: "I bet you watch porno films with your husband."