A young doctor who has just finished a 20-year sporting career including the 2012 London Paralympics is calling for more people with disabilities to work in the NHS.

Kim Daybell joined Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust as a senior house doctor last August at Queen’s and King George Hospitals.

The 30-year-old came to east London from Tottenham’s North Middlesex Hospital working in paediatric A&E, a role model “showing what can be achieved” with a disability.

“People with disabilities make good health workers,” he said. “We’ve had experience with healthcare.

“I have a passion for working with people with disabilities from taking part in the Paralympics.

“But we are under-represented in medicine.”

One-in-five people in Britain have disabilities, he points out. But there is “less than one per cent working in the NHS”.

Kim was born with Poland syndrome and had no fingers on his right hand. A double toe transplant when he was two allowed him to grip with his hand.

His parents encouraged him into sport and he played table tennis for the national able-bodied team when he was just 10, rising to become one of the top five young players in the country.

Kim was scouted at 14 to join the GB Paralympic team in 2007 when London won the bid for the 2012 Games. It was while training that he decided to become a doctor.

“It really inspired me,” Kim recalls. “Sport and medicine tie in closely which gave me an insight into what medicine can do to improve quality of life.”

He hopes to see more support for disabled people working within the NHS and added: “People with disabilities often don’t declare them when applying for jobs as they worry about whether they’ll be held to a different standard.

“I was scrutinised on whether I could do the job when I was applying to medical school at 18, which could have put me off.”