A four-year-old boy was left screaming in pain after Boots pharmacists mistakenly gave him powerful ear drops to deal with an eye infection.
Archie Battersbee had been prescribed eye drops by a doctor to ease a bout of conjunctivitis.
But when his mum Hollie Dance went to Boots for the prescription, she was given ear drops instead. When she dropped them into Archie's eye, the boy was left in agony and left him with a burn around his right eye.
Hollie said: "I put [the drops] in and Archie was absolutely screaming, so I read the box closely and it said they were ear drops.
"Fortunately, I only used it once on Archie, but they're ten times as strong as the eye drops so even then you could see it had burned the skin around the corner of his eye.
"I went back to kick off at Boots and made a formal complaint.
"They have now apologised and given us the right drops."
She said Archie is now terrified of allowing anyone to put medication in his eyes following his ordeal.
Hollie, from Southend-on-Sea in Essex, added: "Unsurprisingly, Archie was scared of anything else going in his eye.
"I eventually managed to get them in and he said it didn't hurt at all, which is what it should've been like all along.'"
As well as apologising for the error, Boots said changes have been made to prevent the mistake being repeated.
A spokesman said: "We would like to once again offer our sincere apologies to the family. At Boots UK, we treat any incident involving patient safety with the utmost importance.
"After this incident, a thorough investigation was conducted and appropriate remedial action was undertaken to ensure that any necessary measures were implemented."