Compact Nursing License Checker

How the Nurse Licensure Compact works

The Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC) is an agreement between states that lets a registered nurse or licensed practical/vocational nurse hold one multistate licence and practise across every participating state, in person or by telehealth, without applying for a separate licence in each one. 43 jurisdictions have now enacted it.

Your licence comes from where you live, not where you work

A multistate licence is issued by your primary state of residence — the state where you file taxes, hold a driver's licence and are registered to vote. That state has to be a fully implemented compact state. If you live in 13 of the states and territories listed above, you hold a single-state licence instead, no matter how many compact states you want to work in.

This catches people out when they move. Relocating permanently to another compact state means applying for a multistate licence there, and your previous one is deactivated. Relocating to a non-compact state means dropping to a single-state licence and applying by endorsement everywhere else you want to work.

Three tiers, not two

"Compact state" is not a single yes-or-no. A jurisdiction can be:

• Fully implemented — residents can obtain a multistate licence, and any compact licence holder can work there. 40 states are in this group.
• Partially implemented — compact licence holders may practise there, but the jurisdiction cannot issue multistate licences to its own residents yet. Guam is currently the only example.
• Enacted, awaiting implementation — the legislation has passed but no date is set, so a multistate licence is neither issued nor honoured there yet.

That distinction matters when you are planning an assignment. A state that has "joined the compact" in a press release may still require you to apply for licensure by endorsement today.

What it means for travel assignments

For travel and per diem work, the compact is mainly about speed. A multistate licence means you can accept a contract in any fully implemented compact state and start without waiting on a licence application. For a non-compact state you need licensure by endorsement, which can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a few months depending on the board — so it needs factoring into your start date, not discovered afterwards.

A multistate licence also does not exempt you from a state's practice rules. You practise under the laws of the state where the patient is located, including its scope of practice and any additional state-specific requirements.

What the compact does not cover

The NLC covers RNs and LPN/VNs only. Advanced practice registered nurses are covered by a separate APRN Compact, which is not the same agreement and has its own, much shorter, member list. Other professions have their own arrangements too — the PT Compact, the ASLP-IC and the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact among them — so an allied health professional cannot rely on the NLC roster above.