How long can I go before my LPN license becomes inactive?

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I am in NY state and I just passed my LPN license last week. I’m still waiting for my license number to show up and although I’m getting offers for nursing jobs I’m seeing that getting a new job is not a priority. The easiest way to get a job would be through a promotion at my hospital but because I’m starting the RN program in a week, I’m going to have to be picky with what job I accept because it needs to work with my schedule. Not only that I have some paper work to do for tuition reimbursement (if I even get it). There’s so much conditions to meet to be legible to get it and maintain it plus I have other last minute stuff I have to do for school. I’ll be busy enough that I don’t see myself getting my first nursing job until November and it’s at the end of August now. So I guess the main question is how long can I go before I get in trouble for having an inactive nursing license?

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Specializes in ICU.

If you look up your license on the NY BON website or through a third party like Nursys.com, it will display your license expiration date. I work at a staffing agency, and we do quarterly license verification on our employees. So it maybe be a few weeks or months before you get caught working without a license (even if it's unintentional) and the Board doesn't take "I didn't know my license was expired" as an excuse. Definitely check out one of those two ways and find out.

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
18 hours ago, Nursing pursuit said:

So I guess the main question is how long can I go before I get in trouble for having an inactive nursing license?

Are you asking about having a license but not having a job that requires it? Usually that's not an issue at all. Many nurses may take time away from work for family or personal reasons. As long as they continue to meet the requirements to renew the license, their license is fine (some are no requirements, some require CE, some require a set number of nursing practice hours). An inactive license actually refers to a status that one can elect to place their license in, meaning they effectively become unlicensed in that state. This status has to be requested and isn't so easy to get out of in some states.

I would also be sure to read the requirements of your tuition reimbursement- many facilities require you to work so much time before becoming eligible but then also require a period of work after they give you the final payment. In my facility, it's a year to become eligible and a year post-final payment. If an employee leaves before that one year, they must make repayment.

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32 minutes ago, Rose_Queen said:

Are you asking about having a license but not having a job that requires it? Usually that's not an issue at all. Many nurses may take time away from work for family or personal reasons. As long as they continue to meet the requirements to renew the license, their license is fine (some are no requirements, some require CE, some require a set number of nursing practice hours). An inactive license actually refers to a status that one can elect to place their license in, meaning they effectively become unlicensed in that state. This status has to be requested and isn't so easy to get out of in some states.

I would also be sure to read the requirements of your tuition reimbursement- many facilities require you to work so much time before becoming eligible but then also require a period of work after they give you the final payment. In my facility, it's a year to become eligible and a year post-final payment. If an employee leaves before that one year, they must make repayment.

I’m all set for the tuition reimbursement, I have been with my company for 4 years and a half and I only need to be with them for at least year to be legible for the benefit.

All jobs that I’ve see require a nursing license to work as a nurse. A better way that I can rephrase my question is that I wanted to know if “not working as a nurse for a certain period of time would get my nursing license deactivated even though I do have a nursing license”?

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6 hours ago, babysplash said:

If you look up your license on the NY BON website or through a third party like Nursys.com, it will display your license expiration date. I work at a staffing agency, and we do quarterly license verification on our employees. So it maybe be a few weeks or months before you get caught working without a license (even if it's unintentional) and the Board doesn't take "I didn't know my license was expired" as an excuse. Definitely check out one of those two ways and find out.

I’ve been checking BON but I’ve never heard of Nursys.com. BON is annoying because there are 3 sections for LPNs:

• Licensed Practical Nurse

• Nurse, LPN

• Nurse, Practical

There should only be 1 section for LPNs but my information doesn’t show up on none of them regardless and I took my NCLEX-PN on 8/12/19 and found out that I passed 8/14/19. The RN program accepted me even though my number didn’t show up. All I did was send the a picture of the passing screen.

Update: My name and number just showed up! Finally!

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
6 hours ago, Nursing pursuit said:

I’m all set for the tuition reimbursement, I have been with my company for 4 years and a half and I only need to be with them for at least year to be legible for the benefit.

All jobs that I’ve see require a nursing license to work as a nurse. A better way that I can rephrase my question is that I wanted to know if “not working as a nurse for a certain period of time would get my nursing license deactivated even though I do have a nursing license”?

As long as you continue to meet requirements to renew and continue to renew, no, your license will not be deactivated.

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