Living in Guam, working in Texas
Can a Guam nurse work in Texas?
Texas would honour a multistate license, but Guam cannot issue you one: Guam has adopted the compact and not finished implementing it. Until it goes live, plan on a Texas license by endorsement rather than compact privilege.
Guam vs Texas at a glance
| Guam (home) | Texas (work) | |
|---|---|---|
| Compact status | Partial | Compact |
| Multistate license for residents | No | Yes |
| Compact nurses can practice here | Yes | Yes |
| Board of nursing | Guam board ↗ | Texas board ↗ |
Status shown as of 2026-06-17. Compact law changes — confirm anything that affects your license with the state board.
Recommended next step
Contact the Texas Board of Nursing and the Guam Board of Nurse Examiners to confirm current implementation before practicing.
Verify before you rely on this
Whether you can practice comes down to your actual license type, not just the two states’ status. Look your license up on Nursys to confirm it is single-state or multistate, then check Texas’s current requirements with the Texas Board of Nursing.
Where each licence is actually checked
These two states do not verify the same way, and the difference matters at different moments: Guam is what you will be asked to produce, Texas is what an employer there will run.
Your home state
Guam
Guam Board of Nurse Examiners (via Nursys) ↗Two things to know. Guam’s material spreads across three domains: the board sits at guamhplo.org, its primary-source search at guamnursing.org, and Nursys carries the free public lookup — one more hop than New Mexico’s two-domain split. And an OFFICIAL verification requires a signed authorisation to release information from the licensee, plus a $25 fee. That consent requirement is unique in this cohort: an employer cannot obtain an official Guam verification independently, the nurse has to sign first, so it belongs in the hiring timeline rather than being discovered at the end of it. The board licenses RNs, LPNs, APRNs and CNAs.
Where you want to work
Texas
Texas BON licence verification ↗Texas runs two different things under the word “verification”, and confusing them costs weeks. The online lookup answers “is this licence real and current” for an employer, immediately. But board-to-board verification for ENDORSEMENT into another state is a separate paper process — a Verification of Registered/Professional Nurse Licensure form, returned to the board by email — not something the public lookup produces. If another state has asked you for verification of your Texas licence, a printout of the online result is unlikely to be what they meant.
Things to keep in mind
- Guam cannot yet issue multistate licenses to its residents, so you may need a single-state or endorsement license for Texas.
Frequently asked questions
Related pages
Sources & last reviewed
- NLC frequently asked questions— NCSBN / NurseCompact (nursecompact.com)
Covers multistate licenses, primary state of residence, the 60-day rule, telehealth, and license type coverage.
- NLC member states map & status— NCSBN / NurseCompact (nursecompact.com)
Identifies full members, partial implementation (Guam), and enacted/awaiting implementation (Massachusetts, U.S. Virgin Islands).
- Nursys QuickConfirm license verification— NCSBN / Nursys (nursys.com)
Recommended destination to verify whether a license is single-state or multistate.
Facts on this page were last reviewed against official sources on 2026-06-17. Compact law changes — always verify with your state board of nursing.