Registered Nurse (RN) License Renewal in Tennessee

Tennessee is the state where “how many CE hours do I need?” has no answer, because the honest answer is zero. Tennessee sets no mandatory continuing-education hour count for RNs. What it requires instead is proof that you’re still a competent nurse, and it lets you prove that fourteen different ways, only one of which is continuing education.

Two items from a list of fourteen

Under the Board’s continued-competence rule, an active RN keeps evidence of two items from this list, for each two-year renewal:

• A satisfactory employer evaluation, or a peer letter evaluating your nursing performance.
• A contract renewal, re-appointment, or continuing contract to a nursing position.
• A written self-evaluation against your profession’s standards.
• Evidence of current national certification.
• A document setting two nursing goals with their development, implementation, and evaluation.
• A letter documenting volunteer nursing service on a board, commission, foundation, or agency.
• Documentation that you helped formally educate nursing students (RNs only).
• Ten contact hours of continuing or in-service education applicable to nursing practice, the CE option.
• A published nursing article you authored in a professional journal.
• A two-week board-approved refresher program, or a two-week board-approved employer orientation.
• An official nursing-school transcript showing three hours of nursing credit in the past five years.
• Evidence you successfully retook the NCLEX.

The practical read: a working nurse who holds a national certification and gets an annual employer evaluation has already met the requirement, without touching a CE course. If you’re not certified, ten contact hours of CE is the simplest single item, but you still need a second one from the list. Because CE is optional here, the CE calculator on this site isn’t shown for Tennessee, there’s no hour target to count toward. That’s not a gap, it’s the rule.

You keep the proof for four years

Tennessee takes your certification at renewal and doesn’t collect the evidence up front. But you must keep your documentation for four years from when you complete each requirement, and produce it within thirty days of a written board request. Falsely certifying that you met the competence requirement, or failing to meet it, can subject your license to discipline, so the two items aren’t a formality. Keep the employer evaluation, the certification card, whatever two you relied on.

The fee

Renewal is a flat $100, paid to the State of Tennessee, with reinstatement running $200 if the license lapses. That $100 matches North Carolina and sits below Virginia’s $140, and there’s no CE-course cost baked in unless you choose the CE option to satisfy competence.

Tennessee is a compact state

Tennessee implemented the Nurse Licensure Compact on January 19, 2018. If Tennessee is your primary state of residence, your RN license can be a multistate license, letting you practice in the other compact states without a separate application in each. That reaches across the region into compact neighbors like Virginia, Georgia, and Kentucky. The privilege follows your legal residence, not your employer, so it holds as long as Tennessee stays home. Use the compact checker below to see exactly which states a Tennessee license reaches.