Delaware

The pathways, as the board describes them

Who may use the route, which is narrower than it first appears. The board opens with a condition and a prohibition in the same sentence: "Submit an endorsement application only if you currently hold an active Nursing license of the same type in another jurisdiction (state, U.S. territory or District of Columbia) and you have never held a Delaware Nursing license of the same type." A nurse who once held a Delaware license is sent elsewhere in the system: "If you have previously held a Delaware license of the same type, log in to DELPROS online portal, and choose the reinstatement option in the drop-down for that expired license." And a nurse whose license has lapsed everywhere is sent out of Delaware altogether, which is the sharpest instruction on the page: "If you have never held a Delaware RN/LPN license and do not hold a current, active license of the same type in any other jurisdiction, you must reinstate your license in another jurisdiction before applying for a Delaware license by endorsement." RN or LPN by Endorsement.

Where the applicant must live, given as four permitted cases. The board defines the term first — "Your home state of residence (also called the primary state of residence) is your declared fixed, permanent and principal home for legal purposes." — then restricts the route to a list: "You may apply only if one of the following applies to you :" followed by residence in Delaware; residence in a state that "is not a Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC) state"; residence in another compact state where the applicant plans "to move to Delaware or to a state that is not a NLC state"; or residence in another compact state where "your license from your home state is not a Multistate license." The space before the colon is the board's. RN or LPN by Endorsement.

A practice requirement, with four ways to meet it. "To be licensed by endorsement Delaware, you must meet one of the following practice requirements." — the missing preposition is the board's — and the four are graduation "within the past two years (24 months)", "At least 1,000 hours of nursing practice during the five years (60 months) before submitting an application", "At least 400 hours of nursing practice during the two years (24 months) before submitting the application", or "Completion of a Board-approved refresher program". A nurse who meets none of them is not turned away: "you may file the application and request the Board's approval of an alternate supervised practice plan." RN or LPN by Endorsement.

Continuing education owed before licensure, not after. A nurse who qualifies on hours rather than on recent graduation carries a further requirement: "as an RN, at least 30 hours of CE within the past two years" and "as an LPN, at least 24 hours of CE within the past two years", each course listed individually — "We do not accept a list of all courses taken with a particular agency." RN or LPN by Endorsement.

Nurses educated outside the United States. "A CES report from TruMerit (formerly CGFNS), if you received your Nursing education outside the U.S. (including Canada or in Puerto Rico)." The board adds a channel condition: "The verification must be sent to us directly from TruMerit." RN or LPN by Endorsement.

Upgrading a Delaware single-state license. Delaware issues both kinds and says so plainly: a nurse who does not meet the eleven uniform licensure requirements "may still receive a Delaware license but it will be a Single-State license Valid only in Delaware." The upgrade is a separate paid service request, and it requires the background check again: "You must get a new State of Delaware and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) criminal background check (CBC)." Multistate License.

The published process

Practice while the application is pending. Delaware answers this twice, differently, depending on what the nurse already holds. For a nurse arriving on a compact license, no permit is needed: "If the jurisdiction where you are currently licensed is a compact state, you can work in Delaware with your current compact state license until your Delaware license is issued." For everyone else there is a real temporary permit, but it is conditioned on employment rather than on the application alone. It may be sought only after the license application is filed — "You must submit your RN or LPN application by either examination or endorsement before you can submit a temporary permit." — and it requires "a job offer letter from an employer locating in Delaware", the board's phrasing. The endorsement applicant supplies "A Nursing Employer Reference Form" and "A copy of your job offer letter". Its life is fixed: "If you applied by endorsement, the permit expires 90 days after issue." The board closes with an instruction about when work may begin: "Do not begin orientation or employment until you are assigned a temporary permit number." RN or LPN by Endorsement; RN/LPN Temporary Permit.

Verification of the existing license, which asks for a different state than most. Delaware does not want the current license verified. It wants the first one: "Verification of original licensure by examination. All states and jurisictions use www.nursys.com to verify original licensure by examination. Please log into the Nursys database and order a license verification from the state that made you eligible to sit for your NCLEX." The board's own worked example makes the trap explicit — a nurse who qualified in Delaware and later moved to Hawaii is told "you will request a license verification from Delaware and not Hawaii." The misspelling of jurisdictions is the board's. Where the original jurisdiction is not in the national system, the board substitutes a form and warns of a cost it does not control: "Contact that jurisdiction to find out if there is a fee." RN or LPN by Endorsement.

Fingerprints and the background check. Delaware runs it through a vendor and identifies the profession by code: "Nursing – RN or APRN | 27S1KZ" and "Nursing – LPN | 27S1NF", entered at "www.uenroll.identogo.com" with the vendor's number given as "(844) 321-2124". Two constraints matter to a nurse who has done this recently in another state. The check must be for Delaware licensure specifically — "Criminal background checks completed for any other purpose (e.g., employment, licensure in other states) will not meet this requirement." — and it does not travel: "A Delaware criminal background check cannot be forwarded or transferred to another state/jurisdiction for the purpose of licensure". The applicant carries the risk of a wrong entry: "Criminal Background Checks (CBC) requested with incorrect information will result in the applicant having to complete the entire CBC process again including paying the processing fee." The process itself is dated: "The new process for obtaining a criminal background check is effective as of September 5, 2023." Criminal Background Check Process.

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.

The application, the same at both levels. "Registered Nurse | $181" and "Licensed Practical Nurse | $181" — Delaware is one of the few in this collection to charge a registered nurse and a practical nurse identically. Reinstatement, which is the route a former Delaware licensee is sent to instead of endorsement, is dearer: "Registered Nurse Reinstatement | $272". Fee Schedule.

The temporary permit. "Temporary Permit (All Types) | $40". Fee Schedule.

The multistate upgrade, and outbound verification. "SR – Upgrade to Multistate Licensure | $50"; "SR – Verification of Licensure | $35"; and with history, "SR – Verification of Licensure with Exam Scores/Hours/History | $45". These are what Delaware charges a nurse leaving or upgrading, not what an incoming applicant pays. Fee Schedule.

The background check. No amount appears in the captured sources; the fee is the vendor's and the division does not publish it, though it does refer to "paying the processing fee" when a check must be redone. Criminal Background Check Process.

Renewal, deliberately unquantified by the division: "You are notified of the amount of the renewal fee at the time of renewal." A late renewal adds a proportion rather than a sum: "The late fee is 50% of the renewal fee." Fee Schedule.

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.

A clock on the unfinished application. "You only have six (6) months to submit your application once you begin." and the consequence is a restart: "you will be required to restart the entire online application again." RN or LPN by Endorsement.

The permit's ninety days. "If you applied by endorsement, the permit expires 90 days after issue." The examination permit is measured from a different event and can end abruptly: it "expires 90 days after your graduation date. However, if you fail the examination, the permit expires immediately." RN/LPN Temporary Permit.

The compact's sixty days, quoted in the docket, and repeated by the board in plain words: "If you move from one NLC state to another, you must apply for a license in the new NLC state within 60 days of when you establish your residency there." Multistate License.

The practice-hours windows — five years for the thousand-hour test, two years for the four-hundred-hour one — as quoted in section 01.

Processing. No period for reviewing an endorsement application appears in any captured source. What the board publishes instead is a dependency on its own meeting calendar: "The Board will review your documentation at its next scheduled meeting.", the board meeting "the second Wednesday of the month at 9:00 a.m., with the exception of August and December." Whether a given application needs board review at all is not stated. Board of Nursing.

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; every source is served by curl with a pinned browser string, and dpr.delaware.gov's robots.txt disallows only /wp-admin and states no rate or window. Findings: (1) the eligibility test is a gate rather than a formality — a nurse who has ever held a Delaware license of the same type is sent to reinstatement instead, and a nurse whose license has lapsed everywhere is told to "reinstate your license in another jurisdiction before applying for a Delaware license by endorsement", which is the only instruction in this collection that sends an applicant to a different state's board before their own; (2) residence is written as four permitted cases rather than as a rule, and a nurse resident in another compact state holding a multistate license fits none of them; (3) a practice-hours requirement with four alternatives, and an escape from all four by way of a board-approved supervised practice plan; (4) continuing education is owed at application rather than at renewal, thirty hours for a registered nurse and twenty-four for a practical nurse, each course listed individually; (5) the verification instruction asks for the state that made the applicant eligible to sit the NCLEX, not the state that licenses them now, and the board's own worked example exists because that is counter-intuitive; (6) there is a real temporary permit, ninety days from issue for an endorsement applicant, but it requires a job offer letter and an employer reference form, so it is unavailable to a nurse who has not yet been hired; (7) registered and practical nurses pay the same $181 application fee, which is unusual in this collection where the two levels usually diverge; (8) a Delaware background check is non-transferable in both directions — one done for another state will not be accepted, and Delaware's own cannot be forwarded elsewhere; (9) no processing period is published for an endorsement application at all; what is published instead is the board's meeting calendar, second Wednesday of the month except August and December, with review deferred to the next scheduled meeting; (10) a staging-host leak worth reporting to the division — the endorsement page's HTML carries an absolute link to dprwp.test.gic.dos.state.de.us beside the production link to the same temporary-permit page, so a reader following it leaves the live site for a test server; (11) an address hazard — /boards/nursing/rn_applications/ and /boards/nursing/lpn_applications/ both return the division's 404 page with a body of roughly 46 KB, large enough that a fetcher checking only for a non-empty response would record them as real pages. 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 application inside DELPROS, the Board's Rules and Regulations cited by section throughout the endorsement page, and the three named forms. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter, reviewed Aug 30, 2026. Corrections on the record in this log: hello@fieldassembly.net.