Researchers from the University of East Anglia found that medical staff are regularly administrating wrong doses or giving patients their medication too early or late.
The report, published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing found that nurses make regular life-threatening mistakes, such as offering ill-advised advice on how to take pills, failing to flush tubes in between administrations of drugs and using the wrong syringes to inject medication into feeding tubes.
The damning report also found that 18 to 49 doses of anti-Parkinson medication were being given more than an hour late, putting patients at a high risk of out-of-control symptoms.
The report observed medical staff as they administered 2,129 doses of drugs. In 817 cases, an error was made.
"It is very apparent that patients with swallowing difficulties seem to be at greater risk of medication administration errors and therefore systems need to be reviewed to improve the quality of their care,” says professor David Wright from the report.