Arkansas

The pathways, as the board describes them

Endorsement, defined. The board defines the act itself: endorsement "is the process of obtaining a nursing license in a U.S. jurisdiction other than the jurisdiction of original licensure." It states where the process starts — "The first step in application submission is to create an account in the Arkansas Nurse Portal." — and, before anything else on the page, "ALL FEES ARE NON-REFUNDABLE." Licensure By Endorsement.

Four applications, not one. The board divides the route by license level and place of education, and describes each. The LPN application is for "the nurse applicant who has an LPN/LVN license in another state and is applying for a license in Arkansas as LPN/LVN; has no previous Arkansas LPN license." The RN application is the same shape at registered-nurse level. A third is "for applicants educated outside the United States, its' territories, or Canada." — the stray apostrophe is the board's. A fourth covers the licensed psychiatric technician nurse, a license type few states in this collection have at all, and it carries a restriction: "LPTN applicants accepted from Kansas and California only." Licensure By Endorsement.

What the board states it may refuse. "The ASBN may deny licensure to candidates who have had a license revoked, suspended, or placed on probation and not reinstated in other jurisdictions." and "The ASBN may also deny licensure to candidates who have been convicted of a crime." Licensure By Endorsement.

The multistate license, and what the board says it is not. The compact page spends most of its length on misunderstandings. "Just because a nurse is licensed in an NLC state, it does not mean that a multistate license was issued. The nurse may have a single state license." On a single-state license: "Nurses who are issued an Arkansas single state license and want to practice nursing physically, electronically or telephonically in ANY other state will need to obtain a license from each respective state(s)." On which law governs practice: "Nurses must follow the laws and regulations of the state in which nursing practice occurs. In the case of electronic practice (telenursing), nurses must adhere to the practice standards of the state in which the client is located." And on a nurse who moves again: "If an Arkansas nurse who was grandfathered into the NLC moves to another state that is a member of the NLC, the nurse will need to meet the URLs in the new primary state of residence." — the abbreviation is the board's. Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC).

The published process

Practice while the application is pending. Arkansas publishes a permit for endorsement applicants and states it in one sentence: "Temporary permits may be issued to qualified RN and LPN endorsement applicants holding current licensure in other states." The board publishes a second, different temporary permit in the sentence before it, and the two are easy to confuse: "Temporary permits may be issued to Arkansas licensed nurses who are graduates of a nursing program. This permit allows a nurse to practice between graduation and receipt of results of the first examination for which the licensee is eligible." That one belongs to the examination route, not this one. No duration, no conditions and no application mechanism for the endorsement permit appear in the captured sources; what does appear is its price, on the fee schedule, quoted below. The board states the compact alternative separately: "RNs and LPNs holding an active license from a compact multistate which is their primary state of residence may practice nursing in Arkansas." Licensing.

Verification of the existing license. No captured source states how verification of an out-of-state license must reach the board for an endorsement application. The board's verification page covers the opposite direction — confirming an Arkansas license to someone else — and says so: "The public, licensees, nursing employers, and other state boards or organizations can obtain verification of licensure information to confirm if an individual holds a current, valid nursing license in Arkansas." It names the national system as primary source equivalent for that purpose and adds a caution about paper: "Do not accept the blue plastic card or a copy of the license verification report as a reliable verification that the person is licensed; check license verification for yourself." and "Arkansas has paperless licensure since an Arkansas license is issued and maintained electronically." The compact page points a nurse the other way once: "If the original state of nurse licensure is not a Nursys® participant, contact the original state licensing board." The instruction an endorsement applicant needs is inside the per-application pages, which are capture-pending; the absence is recorded rather than filled. License Verification; Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC).

Fingerprints and the background check. The board publishes the requirement with its statute and a bar that is stated as disqualifying rather than discretionary. "Arkansas law ACA §17-87-312 requires that each first-time applicant for a license shall have a state and national criminal background check conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigations." and "If an applicant has pleaded guilty or nolo contendere to or been found guilty of any offense listed in ACA §17-3-102, he/she is not eligible for Arkansas licensure." A route out is published in the same breath: "ACA §17-3-102 provides an opportunity to request a waiver of eligibility criteria related to a criminal background in certain circumstances." Three operational rules follow. Checks done for anyone else are refused: "Criminal background checks from other agencies, employers, and education programs are" "NOT" "accepted." A recent Arkansas check counts: "If you have completed a criminal background check with the Arkansas State Board of Nursing within the last 12-months, you do not need to request an additional background check." And the order is fixed: "The licensure application must be received prior to submitting CBC application." The board also warns that a name mismatch costs a repeat: the details used to request the check must match the application, and "If it does not, you may be required to complete this process again at your expense, and this will delay processing your application." Residents and non-residents are given different instructions, with electronic capture mandatory for residents only: "As an Arkansas resident, it is mandatory that your fingerprints be submitted electronically through an electronic/LiveScan process. No ink-based fingerprint cards are accepted for in-state residents." Criminal Background Checks.

The three rows above answer the questions an experienced adviser raises first, from the board's own published documents, or record that a question is not answered in them.

Fees, as stated in the sources

All quoted; none totaled.

How this schedule is read, and a caution about reading it. The board publishes its fees as one table priced across license levels, its header row naming the license levels across the page, ending "LPN | LPTN | MA-C | D-PCT" and carrying an asterisk against two of the earlier headings. The header carries eight cells and the body rows seven, so a figure cannot be assigned to a license level mechanically from the captured text. Amounts below are therefore quoted as the row states them, label and figure together, without this page assigning a column. Which column an amount belongs to is for the board's own table to say. Fees.

Endorsement. The row reads "License/Cert By Endorsement | $125.00", and continues across the remaining license-level columns as "$125.00", "$100.00" and "$65.00". A separate row covers nurses educated abroad: "Licensure/Certification by Endorsement for International Nurse | $125.00". Fees.

The temporary permit. "Temporary Permit | $30.00", stated across the license-level columns as "$30.00". This is the only place in the captured sources where the endorsement permit is quantified at all. Fees.

Other stated amounts. "License/Cert By Examination | $100.00"; "License/Cert Renewal | $100.00"; "License/Cert Reinstatement (Late renewal penalty) | $100.00"; "Duplicate License/Cert | $30.00"; "Certified Copy of Records | $20.00"; "License Certification/Verification | $30.00"; and "License by Examination for International Nurse | $200.00". One line is priced at nothing: "Retired Nurse License | no fee". Another is stated as a sum the board does not complete, on a row the schedule marks with a footnote: "Reinstatement Form Inactive Status" is priced at "$10.00 + license renewal". Fees.

The schedule's own footnotes, quoted without their asterisk and bullet markers. "Must also hold a valid RN license", "Provided for jurisdictions outside the USA", and "Documentation of continuing education may be requested". Fees.

Costs the board states without pricing. For the background check: "Fees associated with conducting the state and federal criminal background checks are at the applicant's expense and are paid within this online system." and, for residents, "Be aware that electronic/LiveScan vendors may charge an additional fee, which you are responsible for paying." No amount for either appears in the captured sources. The board states the same rule as the endorsement page, under its own asterisk: "All Fees Are Non Refundable". Criminal Background Checks.

What any of it means for a particular application is for the board to determine.

Timelines, as stated in the sources

All quoted; none calculated.

The background-check reuse window. Twelve months: "If you have completed a criminal background check with the Arkansas State Board of Nursing within the last 12-months, you do not need to request an additional background check." Criminal Background Checks.

Renewal. The board states the cycle rather than a date: "The Nurse Practice Act requires biennial license renewal for practicing nurses." It also states what lapsing does and does not mean: "Nurses who do not renew are in good standing as long as they do not practice nursing in Arkansas, but must meet all requirements when reactivating license." Licensing.

The temporary permit. No duration appears in any captured source, for either of the two permits the licensing page describes.

Processing. No period for reviewing an endorsement application appears in any captured source. The board states only that a name mismatch on the background check "will delay processing your application", and directs applicants to the portal to check status themselves. Criminal Background Checks; Licensure By Endorsement.

What any of it means for a particular application is for the board to determine.

Source map

Change log

Aug 30, 2026 · Page created. Seven first-party captures taken mechanically through this jurisdiction's capture recipe. Findings: (1) the transport is the story of this build — arsbn.org redirects to healthy.arkansas.gov, which answers plain curl with a bare nginx 403 whether or not a browser user-agent is sent, and which also refuses curl-cffi impersonating the target pinned in `capture.py`, while serving the documents normally to two other impersonation targets; capture.py gained an opt-in per-source `impersonate` field for this, on the same terms as its existing `user_agent` and `ca_bundle` options, and every recipe already in the collection keeps the digest it had; (2) the board publishes a temporary permit for endorsement applicants, but states it in a single sentence with no duration, no conditions and no application mechanism — the only thing quantifying it anywhere in these sources is its thirty-dollar line on the fee schedule; (3) the licensing page publishes two different temporary permits in consecutive sentences, one for endorsement applicants and one for new graduates awaiting examination results, and a reader who finds one will assume it is the other, so both are quoted here with the distinction stated; (4) the fee schedule is a real table priced across license levels, and its header row carries eight cells against seven in the body rows, so a figure cannot be assigned to a license level mechanically — amounts are quoted as the rows state them and this page assigns no columns, which is a limit of the capture stated rather than papered over; (5) no captured source states how verification of an out-of-state license must reach the board for an endorsement application; the board's verification page covers only verification of an Arkansas license going out, and the instruction an applicant needs sits inside the per-application pages, which are capture-pending; (6) the background-check bar is stated as disqualifying rather than discretionary, with a statutory waiver route named in the same paragraph, a twelve-month reuse window, a refusal of checks done for any other body, and a fixed order putting the licensure application before the check; (7) an address hazard — the licensing index links the endorsement page under the text "Licensure by Endorsement for LPNs and RNs", and the path built from that text returns HTTP 404; the real path is `/licensing/endorsement/`; (8) the board licenses a psychiatric technician nurse, a license level few states in this collection have, and accepts endorsement for it from two named states only; (9) the board's mailbox is obfuscated in the site's markup and cannot be quoted, the same hazard Iowa's site presents, and the department-wide footer's address and telephone belong to the Department of Health rather than the board, so neither is reproduced as a board contact; (10) the compact page spends most of its length on what a multistate license is not, which is unusual among the boards in this collection and is quoted at length for that reason; (11) the site's robots.txt disallows nothing and asks Crawl-delay: 10, recorded in the recipe so the next capture inherits it. Automated or AI-assisted decision-making: none located; the terms artificial intelligence, automated decision, and algorithm return nothing across the seven captured sources, and that scope is recorded in `research/ai-disclosure.jsonl`. Capture pending: the four per-application information pages, the board's mailbox, the Nurse Practice Act and Rules, ACA §17-87-312 and ACA §17-3-102, and Internet Archive captures. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed Aug 30, 2026. Corrections on the record in this log: hello@fieldassembly.net.