Ohio Board of Nursing

About this board

The Board licenses registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical nurses (LPNs), and advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs), and also certifies dialysis technicians, community health workers, and medication aides. Each credential has its own scope of practice defined in the Ohio Nurse Practice Act, so a verification result tells you not just that a person is licensed, but what they are legally allowed to do.

Ohio is a member of the Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC). A nurse living in another compact state can practice in Ohio on a multistate license issued by their home state, which means an Ohio employer may legitimately see no Ohio-issued license for a compact nurse. In that case the license must be verified through the home state or Nursys rather than the Ohio record alone — an important nuance many first-time credentialers miss.

Nursing Board by the numbers

These figures are ours, not the board's — we computed them from the full State of Ohio licence file so you can see this board in context rather than one record at a time. Data as of September 2026.

Only 49.6% of the 611,679 licences this board has on record are currently active — the other 50.4% belong to people who retired, moved, changed careers, or simply let a credential lapse. That gap is the single best reason to verify a licence rather than assume a name in a database means somebody may practise today.

Most common licence types

When a licence from this board is not active, the most common reason recorded is lapsed (144,723 records), followed by expired (16,178). Our status dictionary explains what each label actually means.

2.49% of this board's licences carry a recorded board action (15,241 of 611,679), against about 1.6% across all Ohio professions. A board action covers everything from an administrative consent agreement to revocation, and it is cumulative over a licence's whole life — see how we measured that before reading much into it.

Computed by OhioLicenseCheck from the State of Ohio eLicense dataset (issued licences only; application records excluded). Refreshed daily.

Who verifies these licenses?

• •Hospitals and health systems during hiring and at every renewal cycle, as required by accreditation standards
• •Home-health and staffing agencies placing nurses with clients
• •Long-term-care facilities confirming medication aide and LPN credentials
• •Patients and families checking a private-duty nurse’s standing

Verification tips

• Search by license number when you have it — RN numbers are unique, while common names can return multiple matching people.
• Check the license type carefully: an LPN and an RN result can look similar at a glance but carry very different scopes of practice.
• Look at the discipline section of the result, not just the ACTIVE status — a license can be active with restrictions attached.
• For travel nurses from compact states, confirm multistate privileges through the home-state record.

Renewals and expiration

Ohio nursing licenses renew on a two-year cycle, with RNs and LPNs renewing in alternating years during a defined fall renewal window. Nurses must complete continuing-education requirements before attesting at renewal. Because windows and CE rules are updated by the Board from time to time, always confirm the current deadline on the Board’s site — and set an expiry alert here so a busy season doesn’t let a license lapse.

Frequently asked questions