Florida’s Board of Nursing has adopted no sedation rule for registered nurses, and that is what this page records. The document governing the Florida RN is Chapter 464, Florida Statutes — Part I of it cited as the Nurse Practice Act (s. 464.001) — and the word sedation never appears in it. Florida gives instead a general standard: a nurse is answerable for “making decisions that are based upon the individual’s educational preparation and experience in nursing” (s. 464.003(19)), and acting outside it is a ground for discipline.
Florida at a glance
| Board | Florida Board of Nursing, created within the Department of Health (s. 464.004(1)). |
| Document | Chapter 464, Florida Statutes — NURSING, Part I (ss. 464.001–464.027), cited as the Nurse Practice Act (s. 464.001); 2025 edition. No sedation provision of any kind. |
| Rule it applies / Rule it is | A statute, not a rule and not a position statement; it grants the Board its rulemaking power (s. 464.006). The Board’s rules are division 64B9; the chapter there whose title names sedation, 64B9-17, holds no adopted rule. |
| Status | Regulation with force of law. Its purpose clause: “The sole legislative purpose in enacting this part is to ensure that every nurse practicing in this state meets minimum requirements for safe practice” (s. 464.002). No Florida Board of Nursing position statement, advisory opinion or declaratory statement in force on RN sedation practice was located by this review. |
| Dates | 2025 Florida Statutes edition. A 2026 edition is now published; ss. 464.003, 464.013, 464.018 and 464.0156 read identically in it (checked 2 September 2026). |
| Who it covers | Every nurse licensed in Florida — a “Registered nurse” is “any person licensed in this state or holding an active multistate license under s. 464.0095 to practice professional nursing” (s. 464.003(21)). |
| Who it does not cover | Section 464.022 lists thirteen things Part I is not construed to prohibit. The chapter sets no standard for whoever orders the drug, referring only to a duly licensed practitioner authorized to prescribe (s. 464.003(19)(b)). |
| Settings the document names | None in connection with sedation. Chapter 464 names settings elsewhere — facilities licensed under chapter 395 or part II of chapter 400 (s. 464.012(3)(e)); nursing homes, home health and county detention facilities (s. 464.0156(2)); hospitals, clinical laboratories and ambulatory surgical centers in an advanced-practice discipline ground (s. 464.018(1)(s)1.) — but none of them in connection with sedation, and endoscopy, GI lab and emergency department do not appear in the chapter. |
| Re-verification interval | Not stated. Chapter 464 sets no sedation competency interval because it sets no sedation competency requirement. Board rule chapter 64B9-5 names no sedation topic in its license-renewal cycle. |
| Where the record lives | Not addressed. The statute places the duty on the individual licensee rather than naming a file (s. 464.003(19), s. 464.018(1)(n)); where it is documented is left to the employer. |
| CE hours | No sedation CE, and no sedation hours at all. “The board shall by rule prescribe up to 30 hours of continuing education biennially as a condition for renewal of a license or certificate” (s. 464.013(3)). The only subject-specific hours the statute names are at least 3 hours on prescribing controlled substances (advanced practice registered nurses, s. 464.013(3)(b)). Board rule 64B9-5.002(2) adds six mandatory topics; sedation is on none of these lists. |
What Chapter 464 says about training and competence
Chapter 464 answers the sedation question only at the level of the license. Its scope definition puts “The administration of medications and treatments as prescribed or authorized by a duly licensed practitioner” inside professional nursing (s. 464.003(19)(b)), without distinguishing a sedative from any other drug and without attaching a training condition. Two grounds for discipline carry the weight instead: “Unprofessional conduct, as defined by board rule” (s. 464.018(1)(h)), which points outward to Board rule 64B9-8.005(12); and the standard a Florida sedation practice is actually measured against:
“Failing to meet minimal standards of acceptable and prevailing nursing practice, including engaging in acts for which the nurse is not qualified by training or experience.”
Chapter 464, Florida Statutes — s. 464.018(1)(n), grounds for disciplinary action
Florida states the consequence of being unqualified and leaves the definition of qualified to the employer. Read the primary source →
A rule chapter with a sedation title and nothing inside it
Division 64B9 runs from 64B9-1 to 64B9-17, and its last chapter is titled Role of the Registered Nurse in Conscious Sedation — which is why a facility educator may be told Florida has such a rule. Open it on the state’s rule register and the register reports no chapter file and no rules found: 64B9-17.001, .002 and .003 each return a status of not adopted. Rules were noticed for it in 2005 and withdrawn in February 2007 (Notice of Withdrawal, Vol. 33 No. 08); their course-hour minimums and annual re-evaluation never took effect and have never been required of a Florida nurse. Paraphrased from the Department of State’s FLRules record, retrieved 2 September 2026. The empty chapter on FLRules →
What a Florida facility should be able to show
With no state rule to inherit, a Florida sedation program is measured against the general standard — decisions “based upon the individual’s educational preparation and experience in nursing” (s. 464.003(19)), enforced through s. 464.018(1)(n) — which puts three records in your hands rather than the state’s:
- A written moderate-sedation policy you wrote yourself, covering assessment, monitoring, reversal agents, emergency response and recovery. Neither Chapter 464 nor any Board of Nursing rule supplies a template or a minimum content list.
- Per-nurse evidence of the initial education and training that qualifies each RN who administers or monitors moderate sedation for that act — the evidence s. 464.018(1)(n) would be read against.
- Per-nurse evidence that the competence is current, re-verified on an interval your own policy names. Chapter 464 names none.
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 Florida facilities ask
Does Florida require a sedation course before an RN may give moderate sedation?
No. Chapter 464 does not use the word sedation and requires no course for the act; the Board rule chapter that carries a conscious-sedation title contains no adopted rule; and the chapter where the Board sets continuing education, 64B9-5, names no sedation topic. That is not the same as saying training does not matter — s. 464.018(1)(n) makes acts a nurse is not qualified by training or experience to perform a ground for discipline — but the content, length and provider are yours to choose. No state mandates this specific course.
How often does Florida say sedation competency must be re-verified?
Not stated. Neither Chapter 464 nor any Board of Nursing rule sets an interval, because neither sets a sedation competency requirement to attach one to. The interval you write into your policy is your own.
Our office-surgery policy quotes the Board of Medicine’s sedation levels. Does that rule set our nurses’ training?
No. 64B8-9.009 is a Board of Medicine rule, enforced against the physician’s license; the Board of Nursing has adopted nothing that repeats it and attaches no requirement of its own to a nurse working in that office. Paraphrasing 64B8-9.009(4)(b)4.: the person who must be available to monitor a Level II patient in the recovery room may be a registered nurse only if that nurse has post-anesthesia care unit experience or the equivalent and is credentialed by one of the named providers’ Advanced Cardiac Life Support courses — or, for a pediatric patient, by one of three of those providers’ Pediatric Advanced Life Support courses — while the registered nurse who may instead be used to assist with the anesthesia carries no stated training condition, because the rule puts that condition on the surgeon. Both are terms of the physician’s compliance with the physician’s own rule, not nursing licensure requirements.
Compliance note (last reviewed September 2026): This page is educational information about Chapter 464, Florida Statutes, and the Board of Nursing’s published rule record — not legal advice and not a compliance determination. Every quotation was checked word-for-word on 2026-09-02 against the 2025 Florida Statutes edition, and is cited by section because that document carries no page numbers. Material from the Board’s rule chapters, the Board of Medicine’s office-surgery rule and the Department of State’s FLRules record for 64B9-17 is paraphrased, not quoted, and cited to its rule number or notice. The silence recorded here is the silence of the Nurse Practice Act and of the Board of Nursing’s own rule chapters, which is what this review traced; facility-licensing rules administered by other Florida agencies were not traced and are not summarised here. Confirm the current text and your own facility policy before relying on this summary. No state mandates this specific course.