Written Protocol · RN
Louisiana Standing Orders for Registered Nurses
Recognized but not required in every case. The Standing Orders is the written instrument Louisiana 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 (general licensure, not an APRN) are not subject to physician-supervision or collaborative-practice-agreement requirements in Louisiana. The Nurse Practice Act (R.S. 37:913) defines the practice of registered nursing around independent nursing judgment and the nursing process, categorically different from an APRN's CPA-gated diagnosis/prescribing authority.
What a voluntary Registered Nurse agreement covers in Louisiana
Louisiana requires no written agreement for registered nurses. These are the clauses a practice includes when it chooses to put one in writing. The Louisiana State Board of Nursing governs registered nurses here.
Registered Nurse carries out a standing order only when Physician, as the authorized prescriber, has initiated it.
The medical staff and nursing staff of each institution set how a standing order is initiated in that facility.
- The Standing Orders also carries 1 scope clauses, authored in the document itself.
Statutes and rules these clauses cite
- La. Admin. Code tit. 46, pt. XLVII, §3703 (Executing Health Care Regimes as Prescribed by a Licensed Physician, Dentist or Authorized Prescriber)regulation
Registered nurses may execute standing orders of an authorized prescriber who initiates them, provided the orders require no medical diagnosis, prescriptive activity, or anesthetic administration outside R.S. 37:930, R.S. 37:935 and §3705.
- Louisiana State Board of Nursing, Nursing Practice Opinion 02.02 (RN initiating standing orders by physicians), March 25, 2002board guidance
Reaffirms that RNs may execute standing orders initiated by an authorized prescriber and that each institution's medical staff with nursing staff determines how the order is initiated; supersedes opinion 01.08.
What Louisiana 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 Louisiana; they administer medications only as ordered/prescribed by a provider authorized by law to prescribe.
Written agreement
Not required
Unconditional — general RN licensure is never subject to physician supervision or a collaborative-practice/order-set agreement in Louisiana, unlike the APRN/PA/pharmacist categories above.
Practice ownership (corporate practice of medicine)
Licensee-only ownership required — Professional corporation or LLC under La. R.S. 12:901 et seq. for nursing services; non-clinical businesses an RN might own fall outside this framework
For medical-aesthetics (med-spa) businesses performing medical procedures such as Botox or laser, an RN likely may not independently own the clinical entity performing those procedures, by analogy to the North Carolina and Virginia pattern; Louisiana statute does not address it directly.
Sources for the supervision rules (2)
About Louisiana's rules
Louisiana remains a reduced-practice state for NPs; no SAVE Act-style full-practice-authority reform has passed. LA Admin. Code tit. 46 § 7911.A.5 references an hours-based exemption from the CPA requirement for NPs, CNMs and CNSs, but secondary sources give conflicting hour figures (1,000 vs. 2,080); confirm the threshold and resulting scope with LSBN before relying on it.
Other clinicians in Louisiana: see the state overview.