Nursing licenses in the U.S. territories
Are the U.S. territories part of the nursing compact?
Not as a group, and that is the point most guidance misses. The 5 U.S. territories each license nurses under their own board, and they sit at three different points on the compact. A multistate license from another compact jurisdiction currently reaches Guam. None of them issues a multistate license to its own residents. A nurse whose legal home is a territory holds a single-state license and uses endorsement to work elsewhere, whatever the territory’s compact status says.
The direction of travel matters more here than anywhere else in the compact. A territory can recognize an incoming compact license without issuing one — Guam does exactly that — so “is it a compact jurisdiction” has two different answers depending on which way you are going.
The five territories side by side
Read the two middle columns as a pair: they answer opposite questions, and for one territory they already disagree.
| Territory | Compact status | Can a compact license be used here? | Can residents get a multistate license? | Board |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guam | Partial implementation | Yes — under compact privilege | No — single-state only | Guam Board of Nurse Examiners |
| U.S. Virgin Islands | Enacted — awaiting implementation | No — you need this territory’s own license | No — single-state only | Virgin Islands Board of Nurse Licensure |
| American Samoa | Non-compact state | No — you need this territory’s own license | No — single-state only | American Samoa Health Services Regulatory Board |
| Northern Mariana Islands | Non-compact state | No — you need this territory’s own license | No — single-state only | Northern Mariana Islands Board of Nursing |
| Puerto Rico | Non-compact state | No — you need this territory’s own license | No — single-state only | Puerto Rico Board of Nurse Examiners |
What is actually true in each one
These notes are the part that does not generalize. Each is specific to the jurisdiction and comes from our own research into that board.
Guam
Guam has partial implementation of the Nurse Licensure Compact. Nurses who hold an active multistate license from another compact state may practice in Guam under privilege, but nurses whose primary state of residence is Guam generally cannot obtain a Guam-issued multistate license until full implementation is complete.
Continuing education: Guam publishes no nursing CE requirement we could find. That is a finding rather than an omission — see the Guam renewal page for where we looked and how to get an answer.
U.S. Virgin Islands
The U.S. Virgin Islands has enacted Nurse Licensure Compact legislation but is awaiting implementation. Multistate licenses are not yet issued and compact privilege does not yet apply. Verify current status before relying on the compact here.
Continuing education: Fifteen contact hours of continuing education for RNs and LPNs, and thirty for APRNs, earned in the previous biennium. The board recommends that 1.5 of those contact hours relate to the prevention of medication errors. Note the framing the board uses: CE is one of THREE competency requirements, of which two must be completed and approved for renewal — so contact hours alone are not automatically the whole of it. LPNs renew on even years, RNs and APRNs on odd years, and registration expires on the last day of the applicant’s birth month. Full detail and source.
Verify a U.S. Virgin Islands license · U.S. Virgin Islands board of nursing
American Samoa
American Samoa is not currently a Nurse Licensure Compact jurisdiction. It has no separate board of nursing: one Health Services Regulatory Board licenses every health profession. NCSBN publishes no website for it, so the link here is NCSBN’s directory entry with the board’s contact details rather than a board site, and verification is a phone-and-email process.
Continuing education: American Samoa publishes no nursing CE requirement we could find. That is a finding rather than an omission — see the American Samoa renewal page for where we looked and how to get an answer.
Verify a American Samoa license · American Samoa board of nursing
Northern Mariana Islands
The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is not currently a Nurse Licensure Compact jurisdiction. The board was formerly the CNMI Board of Nurse Examiners and is still widely listed under that name; it publishes its own license lookup. Note that the CNMI Board of Professional Licensing is a different agency and does not license nurses.
Continuing education: The board publishes one specific renewal requirement: every licensee must complete continuing education related to Substance Use Disorder (SUD), and it names the online providers it accepts for it — CEUfast, the American Nurses Association, NursingCE, NurseCE4Less, NetCE and Relias. Keep the certificate of completion, which the board asks for at renewal. What the board does NOT publish on that page is a total contact-hour figure, so treat the SUD requirement as an addition to whatever total applies rather than as the whole of it, and confirm the total with the board. Full detail and source.
Verify a Northern Mariana Islands license · Northern Mariana Islands board of nursing
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico is not currently a Nurse Licensure Compact jurisdiction. Verify licensure requirements directly with the Puerto Rico board.
Working out your own situation
- Can I practice in a territory with the license I hold?Check a specific home-and-destination pair rather than reasoning from the status label, which is where the direction-of-travel trap catches people.
- I live in a territory — how do I work on the mainland?Endorsement is the route when your home jurisdiction does not issue a multistate license.
- Which states are in the compact?The full list, with each jurisdiction’s current implementation status.
- How do I verify a license that is not on Nursys?Not every board reports to Nursys. What to do when the national lookup returns nothing.