Montana’s Board of Nursing reaches sedation in one rule, and it reaches it by prohibition. ARM 24.159.1011 — a regulation with the force of law, not a position statement or an advisory opinion — lists the IV medications the practical nurse may not give, and the ninth item is “medications for purposes of procedural sedation, moderate sedation, or anesthesia” (p. 1). No position-statement or advisory-opinion section appears anywhere in the Board’s own site navigation, and of the 79 currently effective rules in the Board’s chapter this is the only one whose text contains the word sedation; both checked 2026-09-02. Page numbers refer to the two-page rules.mt.gov extract; sentences from other Montana rules or the Board’s website are labelled where they appear.
Montana at a glance
| Board | Montana Board of Nursing. The rule sits in ARM chapter 24.159, subchapter 24.159.10, Licensed Practical Nurses. |
| Document | ARM 24.159.1011, “PROHIBITED INTRAVENOUS (IV) THERAPIES” (p. 1) — the rules.mt.gov text of the version effective 08/07/2021, two pages, listed current on 2026-09-02. |
| Rule it is | A rule, not a statement about one. “Authorizing statute(s): 37-1-131, 37-8-202, MCA” (p. 2); the same two implement it (p. 2). It cross-references ARM 24.159.1010 for a dialysis exception (p. 1). |
| Status | Binding, and written entirely as prohibition — both operative subsections open “The practical nurse may not” (p. 1). Shall, must and should do not appear in it. |
| Dates | Adopted 1997; the current version is effective 8/7/21, the last of eight entries in the rule history on p. 2. The document does not say which subsection any amendment changed, so it does not date the sedation clause. |
| Who it covers | The practical nurse, and only by name — both operative subsections, the procedure list at (1) and the medication list at (2), address that licence (p. 1). |
| Who it does not cover | The rule names no other licence: registered nurse is absent from it, as are APRN and CRNA. Its single exception, dialysis, points at another rule rather than granting a permission here. An LPN prohibition is not an RN authorisation. |
| Settings the document names | Not stated — no hospital, ambulatory surgical centre, office or unit. The two clinical contexts it names are procedures, not places: hemodynamic monitoring at (1)(d) and dialysis at (2)(l). |
| Re-verification interval | Not stated. The rule sets no interval and no recurring check of any kind, and no continuing-education cycle to attach one to (see below). |
| Where the record lives | Not stated. The rule names no record, custodian, retention period or documentation of any kind — record, competency, training and education do not occur in it. |
| CE hours | None stated — no contact-hour count, for sedation or anything else. Since the November 2023 repeal below, a sedation CE certificate is an employer’s competency record, not a licensure record. |
What ARM 24.159.1011 says
The rule has two operative subsections and nothing else: six IV therapy procedures the practical nurse may not perform at (1), and twelve categories of IV medication or fluid the practical nurse may not administer at (2) (p. 1, paraphrased). The authorizing and implementing statutes and the rule history follow on p. 2. The clause this page exists for is the ninth item on the second list:
“The practical nurse may not administer the following IV medications or IV fluids:” … “medications for purposes of procedural sedation, moderate sedation, or anesthesia”
Montana Board of Nursing — ARM 24.159.1011(2) and (2)(i) (rules.mt.gov extract, p. 1)
The bar turns on purpose, not on the drug. Paraphrased from ARM 24.159.1010(2), a practical nurse who has met that rule’s education and competency requirements may, under the appropriate level of supervision, give adult clients analgesics including opiates by push or bolus, except as ARM 24.159.1011 prohibits — so the same opiate pushed for analgesia is off limits when it is being given to produce sedation. It says nothing about the registered nurse, whom ARM 24.159.1011 never mentions.
What a Montana facility should be able to show
ARM 24.159.1011 imposes nothing on the registered nurse, and no training, monitoring, ACLS/PALS, rescue or record duty on anyone; no Board of Nursing rule sets a sedation-specific standard or curriculum for a Montana moderate-sedation programme. The specification has to come from your own policy — alongside whatever your facility’s licensing regulator requires, which was not reviewed here. The Board’s general competence and conduct rules, in record 2, still reach the nurse but do not say what a sedation programme has to contain. Three records carry it:
- Your own moderate-sedation policy, dated and approved — who may administer, under whose order, what is monitored and charted, and, because Montana’s one sedation clause turns on purpose, how the purpose of each dose is documented. It should also say that the practical nurse does not administer IV sedation medication, the one sedation question the rule settles.
- Per-nurse evidence of initial education and training for every RN who administers or monitors moderate sedation. ARM 24.159.1011 requires none. ARM 24.159.1205 asks the RN to accept responsibility for individual nursing actions and competence and to obtain instruction and supervision as necessary when implementing nursing techniques or practices; ARM 24.159.2301 makes failing to exercise technical competence in carrying out nursing care, and performing procedures beyond the authorised scope of the level of nursing for which the individual is licensed, unprofessional conduct (both paraphrased, cited by rule number). Those are accountability hooks — not a permission, and not a curriculum.
- Per-nurse evidence of ongoing competence, on an interval your own policy names — Montana sets none for sedation, in this rule or elsewhere in the chapter, and since November 2023 there is no licence-renewal continuing-education cycle to hang one on.
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 Montana facilities ask
Does Montana set a renewal interval for sedation competency?
No — not the Board of Nursing. ARM 24.159.1011 sets no interval, no recurring check and no competency requirement of any kind, and nothing else in the Board’s chapter sets one for sedation. Montana went further: the Board adopted its proposal to repeal the continuing-education requirements that formed part of renewal, effective 18 November 2023, so LPN, RN and APRN licensees no longer maintain 24 contact hours to renew (Board website, checked 2026-09-02). The interval in your policy is your own.
Does Montana require the CSRN™ course specifically?
No. ARM 24.159.1011 requires no course and states no training or competency standard, and no state mandates this specific one. The nearest thing to a training standard in the subchapter is ARM 24.159.1010(1), which requires the practical nurse, before performing IV therapy, to have successfully completed a course of study that includes evaluation, demonstration and documentation of the knowledge, skills and abilities required for safe administration of IV therapy procedures (paraphrased, cited by rule number) — and it attaches to the practical nurse, not to the registered nurse, and not to sedation. CSRN™ is designed to serve as the employer’s evidence — a named credential, assessed competency and an employer-verifiable certificate ID.
Our LPNs monitor patients during moderate sedation. Does this rule stop them?
Not on its face. The sedation clause sits on the list of IV medications and fluids “The practical nurse may not administer” (p. 1); it is about giving the drug. The rule does not address who watches the patient afterwards: no monitoring standard for a sedated patient appears in it, and the one time monitoring is mentioned, at (1)(d), the subject is a central venous access device. Read the gap as something your policy has to state, not as permission granted by omission.
Compliance note (last reviewed September 2026): This page is educational information about ARM 24.159.1011, not legal advice or a compliance determination. Every quotation was checked word-for-word against the two-page rules.mt.gov extract of that rule on 2026-09-02; page numbers refer to that extract of the version effective 8/7/21. Sentences drawn from ARM 24.159.1010, 24.159.1205 and 24.159.2301 are paraphrased rather than quoted and are cited by rule number. The chapter-wide word search, the continuing-education repeal and the Board’s published sections were checked on rules.mt.gov and the Board of Nursing’s own website on 2026-09-02. The finding that the Board publishes no sedation position statement or advisory opinion is a statement about this Board’s published material, not about every Montana regulator — facility licensing, dentistry and medical-board rules were not reviewed here. Confirm the current version of the rule, your facility’s licensing requirements and your own policy before relying on this summary. No state mandates this specific course.