Michigan publishes nothing about nurse-administered sedation, and that absence is the finding. The Michigan Board of Nursing publishes no rule, position statement, advisory opinion or declaratory ruling on moderate sedation that this review could find, and the word sedation occurs nowhere in the state’s nursing statute or in the Board’s general rulebook. Part 172 of the Public Health Code (Act 368 of 1978) governs a Michigan RN, and it defines nursing by knowledge rather than by task, naming no drug, no route and no level of consciousness.
Michigan at a glance
| Board | Michigan Board of Nursing (MCL 333.17221(1)). This review found no sedation-specific document from it — no rule, position statement, advisory opinion or declaratory ruling (checked 2026-09-02). |
| Document | No Michigan sedation document exists, so this guide uses the general one: Public Health Code (Excerpt), Act 368 of 1978, Part 172, Nursing — MCL 333.17201 to 333.17242, Michigan Legislature render, no page numbers; citations here are by MCL section and subsection. |
| Rule it is | It is the statute — thirteen sections in force, none of which mentions sedation. |
| Status | Binding statute, not advisory: “An individual shall not engage in the practice of nursing” unless licensed or otherwise authorized by the article (MCL 333.17211(1)). The Board’s general rules are binding too, and equally silent on sedation: no Michigan nursing authority found in this review states what a moderate-sedation nurse must be taught or how competence is shown. |
| Dates | “1978, Act 368, Eff. Sept. 30, 1978” (History, MCL 333.17201). The most recent amendment in any section history is “Am. 2021, Act 53, Eff. Oct. 11, 2021” (MCL 333.17210). No amendment in the section histories concerns sedation. |
| Who it covers | Everyone licensed under Part 172: the registered professional nurse (MCL 333.17201(1)(e)); the licensed practical nurse, practicing under the supervision of a registered professional nurse, physician or dentist (MCL 333.17201(1)(d)); the APRN (MCL 333.17201(1)(a)); the RN certified as a nurse anesthetist (MCL 333.17210(1)); and two older license types the statute keeps in place, the trained attendant and the licensed psychiatric attendant nurse (MCL 333.17209). |
| Who it does not cover | Not addressed. Part 172 does not address sedation practice, so it carves nobody out of it: no line between a nurse who may administer sedating medication and one who may not, and no sedation-specific condition — no supervision requirement, no drug list, no setting — on a nurse doing so. The conditions it does impose are general or attached to another credential: LPN practice under supervision (MCL 333.17201(1)(d)); and, for the nurse anesthetist, experience or degree for unsupervised practice (MCL 333.17210(3)(b)), a facility policy (MCL 333.17210(3)(c)) and physician supervision in a freestanding pain clinic (MCL 333.17210(3)(e)). None is about sedation. |
| Settings the document names | Three places, none about sedation: the nurse-anesthetist definition of “health care facility” (MCL 333.17210(6)(b)); the APRN’s calls and rounds (MCL 333.17214); and the nurse anesthetist in a freestanding pain clinic, under physician supervision (MCL 333.17210(3)(e)) — a pain-management setting, not a sedation one. |
| Re-verification interval | Not stated. Part 172 sets no re-verification interval. It uses the word competency twice, both in the specialty-certification section — a nurse “who has demonstrated competency through examination or other evaluative processes” (MCL 333.17210(1)) and the Board’s clinical-nurse-specialist rulemaking duty (MCL 333.17210(2)) — one-time gates for a credential, not recurring checks on a task. |
| Where the record lives | Not stated. Part 172 names no competency record, file or custodian. The only retention duty on the nurse in the three documents behind this page is a continuing-education one, not a sedation one: paraphrased, R 338.10601(4), four years after applying for renewal. |
| CE hours | None for sedation. Part 172 states no continuing-education requirement at all. Paraphrased from the Board’s general rules: 25 hours of board-approved CE in the two years before a license expires, for an applicant licensed that whole two-year period (R 338.10601(1)), at least 2 of them in pain and pain symptom management (R 338.10601(2)). None of it is sedation-specific. |
What Part 172 says
The statute’s operative move is a definition, not a permission: nursing is measured by the knowledge it applies, and licensure is the gate (MCL 333.17211(1)). Its task-level provisions are few and scattered — starter-dose drug delegation (MCL 333.17212(1)), APRN prescribing and rounds (MCL 333.17211a, MCL 333.17214), the nurse anesthetist’s anesthesia scope (MCL 333.17210(3)(a)) — and sedation appears in none of them. The definition itself:
“the systematic application of substantial specialized knowledge and skill, derived from the biological, physical, and behavioral sciences, to the care, treatment, counsel, and health teaching of individuals who are experiencing changes in the normal health processes”
MCL 333.17201(1)(c), practice of nursing
MCL 333.17210, the only section of Part 172 addressing anesthesia practice, is a nurse-anesthetist credential section: that certificate holder’s scope covers the anesthesia and analgesia services it lists “if the services are performed in accordance with the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists Standards for Nurse Anesthesia Practice” (MCL 333.17210(3)(a)). Nothing in it addresses whether a registered nurse without that certification may administer moderate sedation — it is authority neither that such a nurse may, nor that such a nurse may not.
The other two rulebooks
Both are paraphrased, with rule numbers. The Board’s general rules, R 338.10101 to R 338.10705, contain no sedation rule and no competency rule for any specific clinical task. LARA’s health-facility licensing rules, R 325.45101 to R 325.45385, are a different regulator’s: they bind the licensed facility, not the nurse’s license, and should never be recast as a Michigan requires statement about a nurse; they classify anesthetic as general, local, and spinal, epidural or caudal (R 325.45103(1)(c)), with no moderate, conscious or procedural tier at all.
What a Michigan facility should be able to show
Michigan supplies no sedation standard, so the standard on the day is yours. 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. Across the statute and both rulebooks, the only requirement naming a sedative is a charting duty in LARA’s facility rules (R 325.45193(1)(e)).
- Per-nurse evidence of initial education and training for every RN who administers or monitors moderate sedation — the statute defines nursing by “substantial specialized knowledge and skill” (MCL 333.17201(1)(c)) without saying what that knowledge is for any task.
- Per-nurse evidence of ongoing competence, on an interval your own policy names — Michigan sets none, in the statute or in the Board’s rules.
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 Michigan facilities ask
Does Michigan set a renewal interval for sedation competency?
No. Part 172 sets none and the Board’s general rules set none — neither mentions sedation at all. Michigan’s recurring requirements on a nurse attach to license renewal (see the CE row), and none re-verifies a clinical skill. The interval you write into your policy is your own; a certificate with an expiry date makes it visible on the roster.
Does Michigan require the CSRN™ course specifically?
No. Part 172 requires no course of any kind for a licensed nurse — the only curriculum it speaks to is “the minimum curriculum prescribed by the board in rules”, which an institution seeking to conduct a nursing education program must be prepared to carry out (MCL 333.17241(1)(a)) — and no state mandates this specific one. CSRN™ is designed to serve as the evidence your own policy calls for: a named credential, assessed competency and an employer-verifiable certificate ID.
What actually governs an RN giving moderate sedation in Michigan?
Three things, none of them a sedation standard: licensure (MCL 333.17211(1)); the general scope definition, which measures nursing by knowledge rather than by a list of permitted acts (MCL 333.17201(1)(c)); and your employer’s policy, where every particular — drug, monitor, staffing, training — is decided, because the state decides none of them. Part 172 ties anesthesia practice to a facility policy once (MCL 333.17210(4) and (3)(c)), but that hook sits in the nurse-anesthetist section and is not authority about the non-anesthetist RN in either direction.
Compliance note (last reviewed September 2026): This page is educational information about Michigan’s Public Health Code, Part 172 (Nursing), MCL 333.17201 to 333.17242, not legal advice or a compliance determination. Every quotation was checked word-for-word against the Michigan Legislature’s rendered text on 2026-09-02, current through Public Act 91 of 2026; statements about the Board’s general rules and LARA’s facility rules are paraphrased from those rulebooks, checked the same day. The finding that Michigan publishes no sedation-specific nursing document rests on those three documents and a search of the Board’s published material that day; confirm it, and your facility policy, before relying on this summary. No state mandates this specific course.