Protocol · RN · Indiana
Practice Protocol for Registered Nurses in Indiana
Registered Nurses practice independently in Indiana. A practice protocol is voluntary; here is what one covers and what the state does require.
General RN licensure carries no physician-supervision or agreement requirement in Indiana. IC 25-23-1-1.1(b) defines registered nursing as an independent practice — assessing, deriving a nursing diagnosis, and executing a nursing regimen — with physician-delegated regimens listed as just one of eight enumerated activities (§ 1.1(b)(5)), not as the frame for the whole scope. Delegated medical-aesthetic procedures are a separate question; see notes below.
What a voluntary Registered Nurse protocol covers in Indiana
Indiana requires no written protocol for registered nurses. These are the clauses a practice includes when it chooses to put one in writing. The Indiana State Board of Nursing governs registered nurses here.
The Registered Nurse ("RN") shall practice under the orders, standing orders, or delegation of the Physician, consistent with Ind. Code Title 25, Article 23. Indiana law does not require a Collaborative Practice Agreement for this Registered Nurse's general scope of practice; the Physician shall instead be available to the Registered Nurse for consultation regarding clinical and patient care issues arising under any order or delegation.
- A voluntary protocol also carries 2 scope, 2 education and 2 registration clauses, authored in the document itself.
What Indiana does require
The supervision and prescribing rules that apply to registered nurses regardless of any protocol.
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 have no prescriptive authority in Indiana under any circumstance. Prescribing requires APRN registration plus authority under IC 25-23-1-19.5, PA licensure with delegated authority under IC 25-27.5-5-4, or physician/dentist/podiatrist licensure. This category is inapplicable to RN scope rather than merely uncodified.
Written agreement
Not required
Unconditional — general RN licensure is never subject to physician supervision or a collaborative practice agreement in Indiana, unlike every APRN role above. This does not extend to delegated medical procedures (injectables, laser/IPL), which reach the RN through IC 25-22.5-1-2(a)(20)'s physician-employee exclusion rather than through the nursing license — see the `cpom` notes and the `esthetician` entry.
Practice ownership (corporate practice of medicine)
Licensee-only ownership required — IC 25-22.5-1-2(a)(22)(G) names 'a registered or licensed practical nurse' expressly among the licensed professions whose members may own a health care organization without that organization committing the unlawful practice of medicine — a direct statutory pathway, not an inference, for the RN entry specifically. A purely lay owner remains outside the list, hence False.
For a med-spa business offering injectables or laser/IPL, ownership and clinical authority are separate questions, and Indiana resolves the second without any cosmetic-specific rule. Title 844 IAC (Medical Licensing Board) has no article on lasers, cosmetic procedures or delegation generally; the operative provision is IC 25-22.5-1-2(a)(20), which excludes from the Medical Practice Act an employee of a physician or physician group performing an act customarily within the employing physician's area of practice, under that physician's direction and supervision, and expressly denies such an employee independent-practitioner status or authority to diagnose, prescribe treatment or administer medication absent specific physician orders. Marketing claims that only physicians, PAs and APRNs may perform laser hair removal in Indiana cite no statute or rule.
Sources for the supervision rules (3)
- IC 25-23-1-1.1 — 'Registered nurse' and 'registered nursing' defined (Justia archived 2014 Indiana Code chapter PDF, decoded locally)secondary
- IC 25-22.5-1-2(a)(20), (a)(22)(G) — physician-employee delegation exclusion and RN health-care-organization ownership (FindLaw mirror, current as of 1/1/2026; verbatim from the archived 2015 chapter PDF)secondary
- Indiana Administrative Code Title 844 — Medical Licensing Board of Indiana, full article index (Cornell LII mirror). Cited as a NEGATIVE finding: 23 articles, none covering lasers, cosmetic procedures, or general delegationsecondary
About Indiana's rules
Indiana requires a career-long collaborative practice agreement for every APRN role except CRNAs (IC 25-23-1-19.4(c)); APRN prescribers additionally face a codified 5%-of-charts random-sampling review (848 IAC 5-1-1). CRNAs instead face a stricter rule — physician direction and immediate presence (IC 25-23-1-30). Widely repeated reports that Indiana enacted full practice authority in 2026 are unsupported: HB 1116, HB 1129 and SB 60 all failed. Indiana's corporate-practice doctrine is comparatively permissive.
Other clinicians in Indiana: see the state overview.