New York Nursing License Lookup — RN, LPN and NP

The Office of the Professions online verification search covers every profession the State Education Department licenses, so the first step is to select the nursing profession you are checking (registered professional nurse, licensed practical nurse, nurse practitioner or clinical nurse specialist); only one profession can be searched at a time. To search by name, enter at least three letters of the last name, then a space, then the first name, without a comma; the search is not case sensitive and returns one name at a time. To search by license number, enter the full six-digit number, adding leading zeros if the number is shorter and dropping any dash and trailing digit. No account is required, and the licensee should be able to supply the license number on request.

A New York result shows the licensee's name (last name first), profession, license or registration number, the city and state of the address on file, the date of original licensure, any additional qualification such as prescribing privileges for nurse practitioners, the registration status, and the date the licensee is registered through. The license number is unique only within a profession, so the same digits can belong to someone else in another profession. The Department notes that records for licenses issued before the mid-1980s may be incomplete, including a missing date of licensure. Summaries of Regents disciplinary actions since January 1994 are searched separately.

For a formal record, the Office of the Professions issues two documents on request: a certification of licensure, which provides the licensee's official information on the basis of licensure, and a written verification of licensure confirming that the person is licensed in New York and stating their registration status. Both are requested through the Office's online license certification and verification request form, which determines which document fits the purpose. The Office publishes this instruction on each profession's pages; the page retained here is the copy under landscape architecture. An official online verification of any New York professional license remains available at no cost through the online verification service, and enforcement actions are searched separately.

If a name search comes back empty, confirm you selected the correct profession, because a nurse practitioner is also licensed as a registered professional nurse and appears under both. Check the spelling, try only the first few letters of the last name to see every match, and for names such as O'Neil also try O Neil and ONeil, since apostrophes and spaces may or may not appear. If a license number search fails, make sure it has six digits: pad shorter numbers with leading zeros and ignore any dash and single digit after it. A few registered nurse licenses issued in the 1950s begin with the letter B or I followed by five digits. A licensee without a New York address can still be authorized to practice.

New York is not a Nurse Licensure Compact state, so a multistate license from a compact state does not authorize practice in New York. A registered or licensed practical nurse licensed elsewhere applies to the Office of the Professions for licensure by endorsement, which requires nursing education completed in another state, an existing license in another state, and verification of that license sent to New York through Nursys where the other state participates, or on Form 3 where it does not. Any other professional licenses held in other states must also be verified to New York on Form 3.