Virginia NP licensure. Worth it?

Virginia publishes 30 business days, about 6 weeks, for an application that arrives complete and fully documented. The clock starts from complete, so verification from your prior state board and your certifying body sets the real pace. Nothing is guaranteed.

$160 in board fees when your home state RN license carries a multistate privilege: a $125 APRN application plus $35 for prescriptive authority. Autonomous practice adds a $100 attestation fee. Without a compact privilege, the $190 RN endorsement and $38.95 fingerprinting take it to $388.95, or $418.95 with a Nursys verification.

Yes, for the prerequisite: the board’s instructions accept a current multistate RN privilege from a compact state in place of a Virginia RN license, which removes a $190 application and a fingerprint-based background check from the add. It does not replace the APRN license itself, which every NP practicing in Virginia holds separately.

Yes, until you have three years behind you. Virginia requires a written or electronic practice agreement with at least one patient care team physician, and lifts it once you attest to the equivalent of three years of full-time clinical experience, which regulation defines as 1,800 hours a year.

You can if you already have the three years. Virginia lets an NP licensed by endorsement attest at the time of application to experience earned under another state’s laws, so an established NP often qualifies immediately. The attestation carries a $100 fee, and autonomous practice still means working inside your training, consulting as the patient’s condition warrants, and keeping a referral plan for complex cases.

Because the license is a joint one. The Board of Medicine and the Board of Nursing jointly prescribe the regulations and jointly issue the APRN license, and practising as an NP in Virginia without that joint license is unlawful. It is one application and one license, answering to two boards.

No. Virginia has not enacted the APRN Compact, and the compact isn’t operational anywhere yet: four of the seven states it needs have enacted it. A Virginia APRN license remains the only way to practice as an NP in Virginia. Our APRN Compact explainer covers the details.

Renewal is every two years and costs $80. Holding the national certification that already underlies your license satisfies Virginia’s continued competency requirement, so there’s no separate hour count to track. Prescriptive authority adds 8 hours of pharmacology or pharmacotherapeutics CE per biennium.

No. Virginia NPs average $129,060, about 6% below the $137,300 national mean. The Virginia case is the cost of entry, a board that publishes its clock, and an autonomy threshold many NPs adding the state have already cleared.