Arkansas rewrote its ratio in October 2025. It is now 4 support staff per pharmacist.

Until October 10, 2025 Arkansas allowed 3 technicians per pharmacist in a retail pharmacy, with a student intern counted on top, and ran a different 3-technician rule for hospital and ambulatory pharmacies. Board rule Ark. R. 2025-15 replaced both with a single sentence: each pharmacist on duty in a permitted pharmacy may utilize up to four support staff members, meaning pharmacy technicians, licensed interns or externs, to assist the pharmacist under direct supervision.

Interns are the detail to get right. A licensed intern working ordinary paid shifts counts inside the 4, unlike a state such as Nevada, whose rule names pharmaceutical technicians rather than interns. An intern on an experiential rotation assigned by an accredited college of pharmacy does not count, and a graduate intern does not count at all. Clerks and other non-technician staff are outside the ratio, the opposite of New York, where unlicensed persons fill the four. In RxShift, a rotation or graduate intern is simply marked excluded from the ratio and the count is right.

The limit is per pharmacist on duty and nothing in the rule caps the overall total, so three pharmacists on duty may be supported by twelve. There is no waiver or Board-approval route. Certification, which raises the ceiling in Alabama or Massachusetts, does nothing to the Arkansas number.