Arkansas guides RN moderate sedation through a Board position statement with Board-adopted guidelines attached. Position Statement 94-1 settles the scope question in its first sentence — the Board “has determined that it is within the scope of practice of a registered nurse (RN) who has demonstrated competency to administer pharmacologic agents under direct supervision of a physician or advanced practice registered nurse (APRN) to produce moderate sedation” (p. 1) — and its guidelines set six criteria that have to be met before that scope holds. Everything below about Arkansas is quoted or paraphrased from the six-page PDF the Arkansas Department of Health serves for the Board, with page numbers so you can check it.
Arkansas at a glance
| Board | Arkansas State Board of Nursing. |
| Document | Position Statement 94-1, “Role of the Registered Nurse in the Management of Patients Receiving Moderate Sedation, Anesthetic Agents or Neuromuscular Blocking (paralytic) Agents For Therapeutic or Diagnostic Procedures” — six-page PDF: statement pp. 1–2, guidelines pp. 3–5. |
| Rule it applies | Not stated as a number. The RN is sent to the “Nurse Practice Act and Rules” (p. 2); no chapter, section or Arkansas Code citation appears in its six pages. |
| Status | A Board position statement with guidelines the Board adopted (p. 2). The document does not say whether a position statement carries the force of law; its own verbs are directive — “Employing facilities shall have policies and procedures to guide the RN” (p. 2). |
| Dates | Adopted November 1994; revised September 17, 2009, September 12, 2014 and May 11, 2017 (p. 2). No review cycle, expiry or next-review date is stated. |
| Who it covers | The registered nurse — the RN “who has demonstrated competency” (p. 1), the “non‐APRN RNs” the Board says demand calls for (p. 1), and “Air and surface transport RNs in the field” (p. 1). |
| Who it does not cover | Not stated as an exclusion. The document names no licence category it shuts out, and licensed practical nurses are not mentioned in it at all. It records a preference: “Optimal anesthesia care is best provided by anesthesiologists and certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs)” (p. 1). |
| Settings the document names | No facility type. The settings it names are functional: an “acute care setting” for a “hospitalized patient who is intubated and ventilated” (p. 1); “the field setting” for air and surface transport RNs (pp. 1, 5); and “each room where moderate sedation is administered” (p. 4). Hospital, ambulatory surgery centre and physician office appear nowhere as setting names. |
| Re-verification interval | None set by the Board: evaluation “occurs on a periodic basis according to institutional policy” (p. 4). |
| Where the record lives | With the employer — the institution or practice setting’s “education and competency validation mechanism” (p. 4). |
| CE hours | Not stated. No contact-hour count, and the words continuing education do not appear in the document. |
What the Arkansas State Board of Nursing says
The operative passage is section B of the guidelines: “It is within the scope of practice of a registered nurse to manage the care of patients receiving moderate sedation during therapeutic or diagnostic procedures provided the following criteria are met” (p. 3). Six criteria follow, quoted and paraphrased in turn: state law and “institutional policy, procedures, and protocol” have to allow non‐anesthetist RNs to give the medications (p. 3); “An anesthesia provider or attending physician selects and orders the medications to induce moderate sedation” (p. 3); monitoring, drug-administration and complication protocols have to be available and “developed in accordance with accepted standards of anesthesia practice” (p. 3); the RN managing that care “shall have no other responsibilities that would leave the patient unattended or compromise continuous monitoring” (p. 3) — the qualifier is the test, not a bar on having anything else to do; the nurse has to be able to do seven listed things, from “cardiac dysrhythmia recognition” (p. 3) to knowledge of “the legal ramifications of administering moderate sedation” (p. 4); and the employer has to run the validation mechanism this page is about:
“The institution or practice setting has in place an education and competency validation mechanism that includes a process for evaluating and documenting the RNs demonstration of the knowledge, skills, and abilities related to the management of patients receiving moderate sedation”
Arkansas State Board of Nursing — Position Statement 94-1 Guidelines, criterion 6 (p. 4). “RNs” is printed without an apostrophe in the original.
What Position Statement 94-1 puts in the room
Section C adds five items in must-and-will language: “Intravenous access must be continuously maintained in the patient receiving moderate sedation” (p. 4); continuous monitoring “throughout the procedure as well as the recovery phase” by measurements “including, but not limited to, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, cardiac rate and rhythm, and patient’s level of consciousness” (p. 4); supplemental oxygen “immediately available to all patients receiving moderate sedation” (p. 4); “An emergency cart with a defibrillator must be immediately accessible to every location where moderate sedation is administered”, with suction, a positive pressure breathing device, oxygen and appropriate airways in each room (p. 4); and provisions for “back‐up personnel who are experts in airway management, emergency intubation, and advanced cardiopulmonary resuscitation if complications arise” (p. 4).
What an Arkansas facility should be able to show
Criterion 6 and the section C list translate into three records:
- Written sedation policies and procedures. “Employing facilities shall have policies and procedures to guide the RN” (p. 2). 94-1 does not say what those policies must contain, so mapping them onto the section B and section C items is our reading, not the Board’s instruction.
- Per-nurse documentation of demonstrated knowledge, skills and abilities across the seven items in criterion 5 (pp. 3–4), from the institution’s education and competency validation mechanism (p. 4). Two of those seven are shown with the hands rather than on paper — the RN has to “demonstrate the ability to use oxygen delivery devices” (p. 4) and “Demonstrate skill in airway management resuscitation” (p. 4).
- Per-nurse evidence that the evaluation was repeated. The guidelines put it “on a periodic basis according to institutional policy” (p. 4), so the interval on your roster is the one your own policy names.
The CSRN™ course — 10 CE contact hours developed and delivered by Capt. M. Ron Eslinger, CRNA, with module exams, case studies and a certificate ID your credentialing office can verify — is built to be records 2 and 3 on that list. Facility seats and roster tracking →
What a course cannot do is witness hands. Criterion 5’s two demonstration items and the validation mechanism itself sit with “The institution or practice setting” (p. 4), so read the course as the knowledge behind those items and the dated, verifiable evidence that it was assessed, with the demonstrations still yours to observe.
Questions Arkansas facilities ask
Does Position Statement 94-1 set an interval for re-checking sedation competency?
No. It puts the evaluation on the employer’s clock: “Evaluation and documentation of competence occurs on a periodic basis according to institutional policy” (p. 4). The Board attaches no length of time to “periodic”, and the document carries no renewal or expiry wording. The interval you write into your policy is your own.
Does Arkansas require the CSRN™ course?
No. Position Statement 94-1 requires no particular course for moderate sedation, and no state mandates this specific one. The only training guidelines it names — ACLS, PALS and NRP — appear only in its rapid sequence intubation criteria (p. 5), as guidelines to demonstrate knowledge against, not as courses to hold or cards to carry. What the moderate-sedation criteria ask for is documentation from the institution’s education and competency validation mechanism (p. 4). CSRN™ is designed to be that evidence — a named credential, assessed competency and an employer-verifiable certificate ID.
What does 94-1 say about a patient who goes deeper than intended?
It treats the recovery as an anesthesia-level intervention: “Rescue of a patient from a deeper level of sedation than intended is an intervention by a practitioner proficient in anesthesia care, proficient in airway management, and trained in advanced life support” (p. 3). That is the boundary of this course as well: CSRN™ addresses moderate sedation, and it is not anesthesia training — it does not make anyone the practitioner that sentence describes.
Compliance note (last reviewed September 2026): This page is educational information about Arkansas State Board of Nursing Position Statement 94-1, not legal advice or a compliance determination. Every quotation was checked word-for-word against the six-page PDF the Arkansas Department of Health serves for the Board on 2026-09-02, which is stamped “Revised May 11, 2017”. The Board has revised this statement three times since 1994 (p. 2); confirm the current text and your own facility policy before relying on this summary. No state mandates this specific course.