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 Tennessee on privilege
Because Tennessee participates, an active multistate license lets you work in Tennessee — 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 Tennessee
Working in Tennessee on another state’s license is practice in Tennessee, so it is Tennessee’s own nurse practice act that defines what you may do and the Tennessee Board of Nursing that applies it. That act is T.C.A. tit. 63, ch. 7 (Nursing); RNs at §§ 63-7-103, -104, LPNs at §§ 63-7-108, -109.
Tennessee has adopted the compact, but we have not confirmed which section of its code carries it, so we do not cite one — several states replaced an earlier compact and the superseded sections still circulate. The practice act above is the citation we have read.
Confirm before you rely on it
License status changes and the compact evolves. Confirm your own license type on Nursys and check Tennessee’s current rules with the Tennessee Board of Nursing. CompactStates.com is an independent guide, not a licensing authority.
Since when has a compact license worked in Tennessee?
Nurses holding another state’s multistate license have been able to practice in Tennessee since January 19, 2018. It has been a member long enough that most guidance you find will be accurate on this point.
Where a Tennessee multistate license reaches
If your Tennessee license is multistate — not every Tennessee 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 Tennessee — 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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