Tennessee’s nursing regulator publishes no rule, position statement or advisory opinion governing the registered nurse in moderate sedation that this review could find — its one sedation rule is a prohibition addressed to licensed practical nurses — and for a facility educator that absence is the finding. The Board’s position statements “do not have the force of law” (p. 1); every sedation-specific question below is marked Not stated rather than filled from another regulator.
Tennessee at a glance
| Board | Tennessee Board of Nursing |
| Document | No sedation document exists from this Board, so this guide is built on the general one: Tennessee Board of Nursing Position Statements, the printing dated “August 2026” (p. 1), 49 pages. |
| Rule it applies | Not rules itself. Each statement reprints statute and Board-rule text under an AUTHORITY heading — T.C.A. title 63, chapter 7, and rule chapters 1000-01, 1000-02 and 1000-04. Chapter 1000-03, the registered-nurse chapter, is not reprinted. |
| Status | Advisory, in the document’s own words on its cover and at the head of every statement — they “do not have the force of law” (p. 1). The rule text reprinted inside them binds and speaks in shall — “Licensed Practical Nurses shall not administer the following fluids/medication/agents or drug classifications in the context of intravenous therapy” (p. 22). |
| Dates | Cover August 2026; statement dates run from 8/24/2017 (p. 18) to one revised 08/06/2026, effective 05/01/2027 (p. 40). Reviewed annually (p. 1). |
| Who it covers | Nurses licensed in Tennessee; four of its ten Practice statements are titled to the LPN role (p. 3). |
| Who it does not cover | Not addressed. The document attaches no sedation-specific condition to the registered nurse, so it carves no RN out of one either — no supervision requirement, no drug list, no training gate. Its one sedation line is a prohibition addressed to LPNs, not a permission addressed to RNs. |
| Settings the document names | Not stated for sedation. The settings it names, such as home health and the outpatient end stage renal disease dialysis setting (p. 3), sit in LPN and delegation statements; none is named as a setting in which moderate sedation is given. |
| Re-verification interval | Not stated for sedation. The Board sets no interval for re-demonstrating competence in any single procedure; its general continued-competence rule runs on the licensee’s renewal period (paraphrased from rule 1000-01-.18(2)). |
| Where the record lives | With the nurse: continued-competence documentation retained four years, and evidence produced within thirty days of a Board request (p. 40). Where the document does put a record in an employer’s file, it is about LPNs in dialysis, not sedation (p. 34). |
| CE hours | None for sedation, and no contact-hour mandate for an RN. Continuing education is one of fourteen acceptable continued-competence items (rule 1000-01-.18(2)(a), paraphrased), not a required hour count. |
What the Tennessee Board of Nursing publishes
None of the Board’s twenty-four statements is about sedation (p. 3). In the Board’s rules it fares barely better: across all five chapters the Board publishes, 1000-01 through 1000-05, the word sedation occurs once, in the LPN chapter, and chapter 1000-03 for registered nurses contains neither sedation nor anesthesia. The Board’s licensure page, checked on 2026-09-02, carried no sedation FAQ either.
What it does say, under its authority headings, is that competence is documented by the individual:
“The Board requires all nurses holding an active license to document evidence of competence in their current practice role. The Board believes that the individual nurse is responsible for maintaining and demonstrating competence in the practice role.”
Tennessee Board of Nursing — rule 1000-01-.18, as reprinted in the Position Statements (p. 40)
It is also the Board’s answer to a question it has not answered. Its Decision-Making Guidelines say that “Board staff may not issue opinions or interpretations on legal questions” (p. 19), offering instead a model for the nurse’s own determination whose step five is the one a sedation programme has to answer: “#5 Is there documented evidence of experience and initial and continued competencies?” (p. 20).
Where Tennessee’s sedation language actually is
The one nursing rule that names it is an LPN prohibition
Rule 1000-02-.02(3) bars licensed practical nurses from administering eleven listed fluids, medications, agents or drug classifications “in the context of intravenous therapy” (p. 22), and the eighth entry is “(h) Moderate sedation;” (p. 22). The word appears three times in forty-nine pages (pp. 22, 24 and 36), each the same list, reprinted in another statement. It is a limit on the LPN, scoped to intravenous therapy rather than to every route, and it says nothing about what a registered nurse may administer; the RN appears in the next paragraph only as one of the people an LPN may give IV push medications under the supervision of (p. 22). Nothing in the publications reviewed here — the position statements, the five rule chapters and the Board’s licensure page — says that a registered nurse may administer moderate sedation; inferring it from an LPN exclusion is your inference, not the Board’s.
Tennessee’s sedation rules belong to other regulators
Two other regulators do address sedation: the Board of Medical Examiners’ office-based-surgery rule 0880-02-.21 and the Health Facilities Commission’s ambulatory surgical treatment centre rule 0720-20-.06(2)(i). Neither is a Board of Nursing document and neither attaches a condition to a registered nurse’s licence — which is not the same as neither reaching your unit, since an ambulatory surgical treatment centre is surveyed against 0720-20-.06(2)(i) and the monitoring it prescribes is what the nurse at the bedside performs. Neither supplies a nursing standard for the RN, so neither should be quoted to a surveyor as Tennessee requires of the nurse.
What a Tennessee facility should be able to show
The Board sets no sedation standard for the RN, so the standard on the day is yours — and its decision-making model asks each nurse for documented evidence of initial and continued competency (p. 20). Three records carry it:
- Your own moderate-sedation policy, dated and approved — who may administer, on whose order, what is monitored and recorded, what equipment is at hand. The Board’s statements and rules supply none of it beyond the LPN exclusion at 1000-02-.02(3)(h), which says only who may not.
- Per-nurse evidence of initial education and training for every RN who administers or monitors moderate sedation.
- Per-nurse evidence of ongoing competence, on an interval your own policy names — the Board states 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 Tennessee facilities ask
Does the Tennessee Board of Nursing publish a moderate-sedation standard for RNs?
No — not for the RN. Its one sedation rule is the LPN intravenous-therapy prohibition above, and nothing in the publications reviewed here addresses the RN and sedation: no interval, no drug list, no monitoring standard, no training requirement — the Board states none. That silence is neither permission nor prohibition; the Board leaves the question with the licensee (p. 19).
A Tennessee rule names moderate sedation. Does it settle what an RN may do?
No. The rule is 1000-02-.02(3)(h), addressed to licensed practical nurses: it bars an LPN from administering moderate sedation “in the context of intravenous therapy” (p. 22). It is scoped to intravenous therapy rather than to all routes, and it does not authorise the registered nurse, because in the publications reviewed here the Board has written nothing about the RN and sedation. If your policy needs the Board’s view on a specific RN activity, its named route is a written request for an advisory private letter ruling (p. 18).
Does Tennessee require the CSRN™ course, or a set number of sedation CE hours?
No. No state mandates this specific course, and the Board requires no particular course for sedation and states no sedation hour count. What it requires is documentation: rule 1000-01-.18 has every active licensee document evidence of competence in the current practice role (p. 40), and ten contact hours of continuing or in-service education is one of the fourteen items a nurse may document (rule 1000-01-.18(2)(a), paraphrased). A 10-contact-hour sedation course with an assessed exam and a verifiable certificate is designed to be one of those items.
Compliance note (last reviewed September 2026): This page is educational information about what the Tennessee Board of Nursing publishes, not legal advice or a compliance determination. Every quotation was checked word-for-word against the Board’s Position Statements PDF dated August 2026 on 2026-09-02; page numbers refer to that printing. Material attributed to rule chapters is paraphrased and cited by rule number, not quoted. The Board reviews its position statements annually; confirm the current printing and your own facility policy before relying on this summary. No state mandates this specific course.