Written Protocol · RN
New Mexico Standing Order for Registered Nurses
Recognized but not required in every case. The Standing Order is the written instrument New Mexico 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-agreement requirements in New Mexico; RN practice is defined and governed by the Nursing Practice Act (Ch. 61, Art. 3, NMSA) without a physician-oversight gate.
What a voluntary Registered Nurse agreement covers in New Mexico
New Mexico requires no written agreement for registered nurses. These are the clauses a practice includes when it chooses to put one in writing. The New Mexico Board of Nursing governs registered nurses here.
Physician, employed or authorized by the department, prescribes the standing order in the name of the school or school district for a stock supply of emergency medication.
Source: 7.30.12 NMAC (Emergency Medications in Schools), 7.30.12.8, .9, .10
- The Standing Order also carries 1 scope, 1 education and 1 registration clauses, authored in the document itself.
Statutes and rules these clauses cite
- 7.30.12 NMAC (Emergency Medications in Schools), 7.30.12.8, .9, .10regulation
A physician employed or authorized by the department may prescribe a standing order in the name of the school or school district for stock albuterol with spacers and stock epinephrine auto-injectors; only a trained PED-licensed school nurse may administer albuterol; training requirements.
What New Mexico 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 New Mexico; they administer medications only under a valid order from an authorized prescriber.
Written agreement
Not required
Unconditional — general RN licensure is never subject to physician supervision or a collaborative agreement, unlike the APRN/PA categories above.
Practice ownership (corporate practice of medicine)
Non-licensee ownership permitted — General RN licensure does not require formation of a same-profession professional corporation — an RN may own non-clinical businesses (staffing, home health, the MSO/business side of a med-spa) without the ownership restriction applicable to entities delivering physician/APRN-level clinical services.
For medical-aesthetics businesses performing procedures reserved to physicians/APRNs, RN ownership of the business entity does not itself confer authority to perform those procedures.
Sources for the supervision rules (1)
About New Mexico's rules
New Mexico has no corporate-practice-of-medicine doctrine (1987 A.G. opinion) — non-physician entities may employ physicians if clinical judgment isn't controlled — but professional corporations must still be single-profession owned (a PA/NP/etc. entity can't mix ownership with physicians). NP/CRNA/CNM/CNS practice independently with full prescriptive authority (Schedules II–V); PA remains the outlier requiring ongoing physician involvement.
Other clinicians in New Mexico: see the state overview.