What compact privilege is
A multistate license from your primary state of residence carries compact privilege — the authority to practice in other compact states without licensing separately in each. It only exists between states that are live in the Nurse Licensure Compact.
Practicing in Delaware on privilege
Because Delaware participates, an active multistate license lets you work in Delaware — common for travel nurses and telehealth. Privilege follows the patient’s location and your home-state license staying active and multistate.
The law that governs this in Delaware
Working in Delaware on another state’s license is practice in Delaware, so it is Delaware’s own nurse practice act that defines what you may do and the Delaware Board of Nursing that applies it. That act is 24 Del. C. ch. 19 (Board of Nursing).
The compact itself is separate law. Delaware adopted it at Del. Code tit. 24, ch. 19A (Nurse Multistate Licensure Compact), which is what allows a multistate license issued elsewhere to reach Delaware at all — the practice act still decides what you may do once it does.
Delaware keeps the compact out of the nursing chapter entirely: ch. 19 is Nursing, ch. 19A is the Nurse Multistate Licensure Compact, and ch. 19B is an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Compact. The APRN chapter is worth reading carefully — its heading in the code is qualified “[Effective upon …]”, so Delaware has enacted APRN compact law that is contingent rather than in force. That is primary-source confirmation of the general point: a state having APRN compact language on its books does not mean an APRN multistate license exists there.
Confirm before you rely on it
License status changes and the compact evolves. Confirm your own license type on Nursys and check Delaware’s current rules with the Delaware Board of Nursing. CompactStates.com is an independent guide, not a licensing authority.
Since when has a compact license worked in Delaware?
Nurses holding another state’s multistate license have been able to practice in Delaware since January 19, 2018. It has been a member long enough that most guidance you find will be accurate on this point.
Where a Delaware multistate license reaches
If your Delaware license is multistate — not every Delaware license is — it carries privilege into these 39 jurisdictions, because each one currently issues and honours multistate licenses. It reaches nowhere else, and a non-compact state needs its own license by endorsement.
Two conditions sit underneath this list and neither is visible on it. Your primary state of residence must actually be Delaware — privilege follows residence, not where the license was issued. And the license itself must be multistate rather than single-state, which is a fact about your record that only verification can settle.
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