Registered Nurse (RN) License Renewal in Kentucky

Kentucky is a yearly state, and its continuing-education rule has a shortcut most nurses can use: work a normal job and you owe half the hours. Fourteen contact hours a year, or seven plus a signed employer evaluation. If you’re employed and reviewed, the seven-hour path is the obvious one.

Fourteen hours, or seven plus an evaluation

Every year, an active Kentucky RN completes one of these (you can’t mix them):

• 14 approved contact hours of continuing education, with completion certificates.
• 7 approved contact hours plus a nursing employment evaluation rated satisfactory for continued employment, on the KBN’s Continuing Education Nursing Employment Evaluation Form, signed by your supervisor.

For a working, well-reviewed nurse, the second path halves the CE you have to buy and sit through. The earning period is November 1 to October 31, so the window you earn in is offset from the fall renewal season, a detail worth noting so you don’t assume hours earned in, say, early November count against the cycle that just closed.

New Kentucky nurses also have one-time, content-specific trainings to complete within three years of licensure: domestic violence, pediatric abusive head trauma, suicide prevention, and Alzheimer’s and dementia care. Once done, they never have to be retaken. They’re listed above as reminders because they catch new licensees off guard, they sit outside the annual 14-or-7 count.

Renewal is annual, in a tight fall window

Kentucky renews RN licenses every year, and the renewal season is narrow: September 15 through midnight on October 31. Miss it and the license lapses, working on a lapsed license is a violation, so this is a hard deadline, not a soft one. You can renew and pay before you’ve finished your contact hours, but you still have to complete them for the earning period, the payment and the CE are separate obligations.

The fee, base and total

Kentucky’s regulation sets the license renewal fee at $55 (201 KAR 20:240). At checkout you’ll pay a bit more than that: the Board also collects statutory surcharges at renewal (a nursing scholarship fund fee and related assessments), which is why you’ll often see Kentucky’s renewal quoted around $65. The $55 above is the regulation’s base renewal fee; budget for the surcharges on top.

Kentucky is a compact state

Kentucky implemented the Nurse Licensure Compact on January 19, 2018. If Kentucky is your primary state of residence, your RN license can be a multistate license, letting you practice in the other compact states without applying separately in each. That reaches across Kentucky’s many borders into compact neighbors like Tennessee, Virginia, Indiana, and Missouri. The privilege follows your legal residence, so it holds as long as Kentucky stays home. Use the compact checker below to see exactly which states a Kentucky license reaches.