Written Protocol · RN
Arkansas Nurse Driven Standing Orders for Registered Nurses
Recognized but not required in every case. The Nurse Driven Standing Orders is the written instrument Arkansas law names for a Registered Nurse working with a physician. Below: the board that governs it, what it contains when one is used, and the supervision rules that apply either way.
RNs practice under the Arkansas Nurse Practice Act (§ 17-87-101 et seq.) within RN scope, which does not require physician supervision as a matter of licensure — standing orders/facility policy are an employment matter, not a statutory physician-supervision or CPA requirement like the APRN/DSM-pharmacist tiers above.
What a voluntary Registered Nurse agreement covers in Arkansas
Arkansas requires no written agreement for registered nurses. These are the clauses a practice includes when it chooses to put one in writing. The Arkansas State Board of Nursing governs registered nurses here.
Registered Nurse initiates a standing order only in a hospital that has adopted the CMS Conditions of Participation and whose medical staff and nursing and pharmacy leadership have approved the order and review it periodically.
An order initiated for a patient is entered in the medical record and later authenticated by a physician or another practitioner responsible for the patient, except influenza and pneumococcal vaccines.
- The Nurse Driven Standing Orders also carries 1 scope clauses, authored in the document itself.
Statutes and rules these clauses cite
- Arkansas State Board of Nursing Position Statement 20-1, Role of the Licensed Nurse in Nurse Driven Standing Orders (adopted May 6, 2020)board guidance
Licensed nurses in hospitals subject to the CMS Conditions of Participation may use standing orders, order sets and protocols approved by medical staff and nursing and pharmacy leadership, with criteria for initiation and after-the-fact authentication.
What Arkansas does require
The supervision and prescribing rules that apply to registered nurses regardless of any agreement.
Proximity
Not codified
Supervision ratio
Not codified — no cap on file
Chart review
Not codified
Meeting cadence
Not codified
Prescriptive authority
No agreement needed to prescribe · no controlled-substance authority
RNs do not have independent prescriptive authority in Arkansas.
Written agreement
Not required
Unconditional — no CPA, independence threshold, or FIPCC pathway applies to base RN licensure.
Practice ownership (corporate practice of medicine)
Non-licensee ownership permitted — Not applicable to RN licensure as such — no RN-specific ownership restriction was found.
Sources for the supervision rules (1)
- Ark. Code Ann. § 17-87-101 et seq. — Arkansas Nurse Practice Act
About Arkansas's rules
Act 412 of 2021 created a 6,240-hour Full Independent Practice Credentialing Committee (FIPCC) pathway for CNPs and CNSs only — CRNAs and CNMs are excluded from FIPCC and follow their own frameworks. CRNA independent-practice status is a genuine, unresolved ambiguity (see that entry) — a widely repeated 'Medicare opt-out' claim doesn't equal a change to AR's own supervision statute.
Other clinicians in Arkansas: see the state overview.