The Delaware Board of Nursing publishes no document about nurse-administered sedation that this review found, and for a facility educator that absence is the finding. The word sedation does not occur once in the Board’s 54-page rulebook, 24 DE Admin. Code 1900; neither does conscious, nor propofol, nor ketamine. Its binding standards chapter declines, in terms, to answer questions framed that way: “The board will not rule on for what purpose a drug is given” (p. 22). Page numbers are to the Division of Professional Regulation’s authenticated PDF.
Delaware at a glance
| Board | Delaware Board of Nursing; rules adopted “by authority of the Delaware Nurse Practice Act, 24 Del.C. §1906(a)(1)” (p. 1). Its published shelf (twelve items listed at dpr.delaware.gov/boards/nursing/ on 2026-09-02, not in the rulebook) has no position-statement or advisory-opinion section and no sedation item. |
| Document | No Delaware Board of Nursing sedation document exists, so this guide is built on that Board’s general one: 1900 Board of Nursing, Rules and Regulations — Delaware Administrative Code, Title 24, Department of State, Division of Professional Regulation; authenticated PDF, 54 pages. |
| Rule it is | A regulation with the force of law. Nearest this question: § 7.0 Standards of Nursing Practice, § 7.7 dispensing, § 7.8 “Intravascular Therapy by Licensed Nurses” (p. 26) and its § 7.8.4 “Special Infusion Therapy Procedures by Registered Nurses” (p. 28) — none addressing sedation. |
| Status | Binding: standards of nursing practice interpret the legal definitions of nursing and “provide criteria against which violations of the law can be determined” (p. 22). Its grammar is mixed — § 7.4’s duty list is introduced by shall (p. 22), but the competency sentence for an unlisted procedure is written in should (p. 23, quoted below). |
| Dates | § 7.0’s amendment history: “1 DE Reg. 1888 (06/01/98)” (p. 30) to “27 DE Reg. 619 (02/01/24)” (p. 31); the compilation closes at “28 DE Reg. 606 (02/01/25)” and “28 DE Reg. 607 (02/01/25)” (p. 54). |
| Who it covers | Registered and licensed practical nurses (§ 7.4 common standards, § 7.5 the RN, § 7.6 the LPN); advanced practice registered nurses (§ 8.0); unlicensed assistive personnel through RN delegation and the Limited Lay Administration of Medications program. |
| Who it does not cover | Not addressed: the rulebook carves nobody out of sedation practice because it does not address sedation practice. Its exclusions are about other things — the LPN may calculate intravascular dosage and rate but “This does not include titration.” (p. 28); “The Registered Nurse may not insert epidural catheters.” (p. 29). |
| Settings the document names | Only incidentally, never in a sedation context: “Nursing practice occurs where the patient is located.” (p. 22). |
| Re-verification interval | Not stated — for sedation, or for any § 7.8.4 special procedure: five of the six require documentation of some kind, three of those a preceptor’s sign-off (next row), and none names an interval. The sixth, the perineural route, asks for education and training without saying either must be documented. It does set recurring checks elsewhere: annual competency demonstration for point-of-care laboratory testing (p. 23), annual renewal for LLAM-trained unlicensed assistive personnel (p. 16). |
| Where the record lives | With the employing agency, and for half of § 7.8.4 with a preceptor. Three of its six special infusion procedures — chemotherapy, central venous, intraosseous — require “documented educational preparation according to the employing agency’s policies and procedures” (p. 28); the last two of those, plus the epidural route, add a preceptor, in the central-venous wording “A preceptor must supervise the learning experience and must document the Registered Nurse’s competency in the performance of the procedure.” (p. 29). The other two are worded differently: subcutaneous infusion, “after documented instruction and competency demonstration” (p. 30); perineural, “A RN who has received the proper additional education and training” (p. 30). No custodian, retention period or format is named. |
| CE hours | None for sedation. Renewal CE is general — 30 contact hours a biennium for the RN, 24 for the LPN (p. 41) — of which at least 3 must be “in the area of substance abuse” (p. 41) and at least one hour “on the recognition of and response to suspected or known sexual abuse, physical abuse, exploitation, trafficking, or domestic violence of vulnerable persons” (p. 41). Beyond those two mandated subjects it asks only for an approved method or approved provider (p. 41). |
What 24 DE Admin. Code 1900 says
Two rules explain why a sedation standard was never going to sit in § 7.0. One is the refusal to decide by indication quoted above (p. 22). The other sends the question outward — to professional nursing organisations’ standards and position statements, which “may be used to address scope of practice accountability.” (p. 22), and to the Board’s Scope of Practice decision tree (p. 22). For a procedure it does not name, this is the operative sentence:
“Nurses who perform any special procedures should possess specialized knowledge and competent technical skill in the performance of the procedure, be knowledgeable of the potential complications and adverse reactions which may result from the performance of the procedure, possess the knowledge and skill to recognize adverse reactions, and take appropriate actions.”
Delaware Board of Nursing — 24 DE Admin. Code 1900, § 7.4.1.13 (authenticated PDF, p. 23)
It names no procedure, no course and no record.
What a Delaware facility should be able to show
The Board sets no sedation standard, so your practice is measured against your own policy — alongside the professional-organisation standards § 7.3.2 points to (p. 22) and whatever your facility’s licensing regulator requires. Three records carry it:
- Your own moderate-sedation policy, dated and approved — who may administer, under whose order, what is monitored, what equipment is at hand, what is recorded: particulars the rulebook does not supply, deferring training to the employing agency’s policies and procedures (p. 28).
- Per-nurse evidence of initial education and training for every RN who administers or monitors moderate sedation — the documented preparation § 7.8.4 requires for five of the six procedures it does name, applied to one it does not.
- Per-nurse evidence of ongoing competence, on an interval your own policy names — Delaware sets none for any § 7.8.4 procedure, and none for sedation.
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 →
Questions Delaware facilities ask
Does Delaware set a renewal interval for sedation competency?
No. The rules do not address sedation, so they set no interval for it — and none for the § 7.8.4 special infusion procedures they do address, as the table above shows. The interval you write into your policy is your own; a certificate with an expiry date makes it visible on the roster.
Does Delaware require the CSRN™ course specifically?
No. The rulebook requires no course for sedation, because it does not mention sedation. The one course § 7.8 attaches to a procedure is the epidural one — “The Registered Nurse must complete a course that includes” (p. 29) content for that route — and it is not a sedation requirement. Of a nurse performing an unnamed special procedure the rules ask knowledge, skill and the ability to recognise adverse reactions (p. 23), without saying what evidence of that looks like. CSRN™ is designed to serve as that evidence.
Our RNs give moderate sedation in a GI lab. Does § 7.8.4.3 apply to them?
Not on its terms. Section 7.8.4.3 governs analgesics or low-dose anesthetics at analgesic levels instilled into an existing epidural catheter “for acute and chronic pain management” (p. 29); § 7.8.4.6 covers the perineural route and expressly excludes the epidural one (p. 30). Neither addresses a sedative given for a procedure, and no other section does either — the word does not appear in the chapter. Treat them as the closest documented analogue, not as authority — documented education, a preceptor-verified competency, defined limits — which a Delaware sedation policy has to supply on its own.
Compliance note (last reviewed September 2026): This page is educational information about 24 DE Admin. Code 1900, not legal advice or a compliance determination. Every quotation was checked word-for-word against the Division of Professional Regulation’s authenticated PDF of that chapter on 2026-09-02, whose history ends at 28 DE Reg. 606 and 607, both effective 1 February 2025. The finding that the Board publishes no sedation-specific document was checked against this chapter and the Board’s own published document list on 2026-09-02; it is a statement about the Board of Nursing, not about every Delaware regulator — facility licensing and other boards were not reviewed. Confirm the current edition, your facility’s licensing requirements and your own policy before relying on this summary. No state mandates this specific course.