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 Maryland on privilege
Because Maryland participates, an active multistate license lets you work in Maryland — 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 Maryland
Working in Maryland on another state’s license is practice in Maryland, so it is Maryland’s own nurse practice act that defines what you may do and the Maryland Board of Nursing that applies it. That act is Md. Code, Health Occupations, tit. 8 (Nurses).
The compact itself is separate law. Maryland adopted it at Md. Code, Health Occupations §§ 8-7A-01 to 8-7A-05 (Nurse Licensure Compact); board authority at § 8-205(a)(1), which is what allows a multistate license issued elsewhere to reach Maryland at all — the practice act still decides what you may do once it does.
Maryland gives the compact its own subtitle (8-7A) within the Health Occupations Article, with the operating detail in regulation at COMAR 10.27.22. Worth knowing for anyone tracing the history: Maryland joined the original compact in 1999, before the enhanced NLC existed, so its compact law long predates the 2018 rewrite that most states are working from.
Confirm before you rely on it
License status changes and the compact evolves. Confirm your own license type on Nursys and check Maryland’s current rules with the Maryland Board of Nursing. CompactStates.com is an independent guide, not a licensing authority.
Since when has a compact license worked in Maryland?
Nurses holding another state’s multistate license have been able to practice in Maryland since January 19, 2018. It has been a member long enough that most guidance you find will be accurate on this point.
Where a Maryland multistate license reaches
If your Maryland license is multistate — not every Maryland 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 Maryland — 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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