"Patient medication being left on patients table for hours"

My 70yr old mum was transferred for rehab to ward 15 (care of the elderly) in Hairmyres hospital having been in the diabetes ward perviously. I visited on one afternoon at 3:20pm to find all of my mums morning tablets still in their medicine pot on her table in front of her. My mum is slightly confused at times and didn't know if they were her tablets or not but did say they had been there all day. At home I sort out my mums medicines into a dosette box and as a registered nurse I am aware that these were all her morning meds. I spoke with a nurse who took them off of me and said that she hadn't given out the medicines that morning! I stated that mum needed to be prompted whilst at home to take her meds by carers so this would need to be done.

Saturday I went to visit mum at around the same time and again her meds were sitting in front of her - again I was told it wasn't me who did the meds in the morning! !  The nurse did however make a note to put it in the report that mum needed assistance with her meds and wrote it on the wipe board behind mums bed.

A couple of days later - visited at 3pm to find some meds in a pot in front of mum - asked to speak with a nurse, waited 1. 5hrs and no one came so went back up to be told these would be her afternoon meds. We checked it on her kardex and no it was two of her morning tablets. The nurse checked the report and there in capitals it says "needs assistance with meds".

The questions/points I have are:

when has it become acceptable for a RN to dispense meds and leave them in front of an elderly patient with some level of confusion and expect them to take them?

Surely it is the hospital's responsibility to ensure right medicine at the right time to the right patient and that includes ensuring that they take them not just dispensing them?

if these pots of tablets have been sitting on a patient table since 8. 00-8. 30 in the am and they are still there at 3pm that is 6+ hrs, does that mean my mum has had no staff input in that 6hr? I know she has, as she has insulin injections. Care assistants will have been around but even they haven't thought to ask why medicines are still sitting there.

my mum has been prescribed these medicines for a reason - hypertension, anti depressants, etc so it is imperative that she receives them and yet in just over a 1 week period I know she hasn't had them 3 times.

In a care of the elderly ward there are many patients wandering around in and out of rooms, confused. What if they were to lift the tablets and take them and have a reaction? Where is the safeguard to patient safety?

There are also many visitors, staff, in and out of the bedspaces all day. What if someone else took them?

This is totally unacceptable and a fundamental principal of nursing care and yet it is sadly lacking in this instance where they are supposed to be a specialist care of the elderly ward.