Updated for 2026

New Hampshire PMHNP Continuing Education Requirements

New Hampshire psychiatric nurse practitioners must complete 30 continuing education hours every 2 years to renew their APRN license, including 5 hours of pharmacology and 3 hours of pain management and addiction disorder (aprns with a DEA registration).

These are the New Hampshire APRN license requirements for a board-certified PMHNP who prescribes controlled substances. Your RN license, ANCC certification and DEA registration renew separately; see every credential.

30hours every 2 years
Topic minimums, counted within the 30
5pharmacology
3pain management and addiction disorder (aprns with a DEA registration)

The renewal cycle is biennial and is tied to your license's renewal (expiration) date.

Where this comes from
State source
New Hampshire board rule
Last verified
October 2026
Ruleset version
2026.3

Every figure on this page is read from this rule, and the page refreshes when the ruleset changes. How we verify

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Requirements

New Hampshire PMHNP requirements

Total

30 hoursYou need 30 hours every 2 years. The renewal cycle is biennial and is tied to your license's renewal (expiration) date.

Topic minimums, counted within the 30

The remaining 22 hours are not tied to a topic minimum.
Pharmacology
5
You need 5 hours each cycle. Pharmacology is owed by every APRN. The five hours attach to APRN license renewal, not to prescribing: New Hampshire gives every APRN "plenary authority to possess, compound, prescribe, administer, and dispense and distribute to clients controlled and non-controlled drugs" (RSA 326-B:11, III), with no separate prescriptive-authority certificate, collaborative agreement or renewal. So the pharmacology floor is gated on `license_type eq aprn` alone, not on `prescribing`.
Pain management and addiction disorder (APRNs with a DEA registration)
3
You need 3 hours each cycle.

Cycle and record rules

Renewal
The renewal cycle is biennial and is tied to your license's renewal (expiration) date.
Renewal fee
The board renewal fee is $80 every 2 years.
Approved providers
New Hampshire names no approved-provider list for nurses. Hours may come from "workshops, conferences, lectures or in-service educational offerings that are designed to enhance nursing knowledge, judgment, and skills" (Nur 403.01(a)) with content in "(1) Nursing art and science; (2) Nursing education, practice, or research; (3) Research in health care; (4) Biological, physical, or behavioral sciences; (5) Management, administration or supervision of health-care delivery; (6) Teaching or learning principles; (7) Ethical or legal aspects of health-care; (8) Content offered in basic nursing educational programs appropriate to the licensure category; or (9) Health-care trends, issues or policies" (403.01(b)). Also accepted: "(1) Authorship of a published professional nursing article or book; (2) Preparation and initial delivery of a professional nursing paper; (3) Preparation and initial participation on a professional nursing panel; (4) Participation in quality assessment or risk management studies; (5) Nursing or nursing-related grant-writing or research; or (6) Completion of 2 or more credits in a school, college, or university that enhances nursing knowledge, judgment and skills" (403.01(c)), with one academic credit equal to 15 contact hours (403.04). Hours must fall "within the 2 years immediately preceding date of application" (403.01(d); 401.03(a)(1)). The DEA prescriber hours must be "prescriber's regulatory board-approved" (RSA 318-B:41, VI); the board lists approved opioid courses on its website (318-B:41, V).
Recordkeeping
Keep CE documentation for 2 years after each renewal.
Board audit
The board may audit licensees to verify CE compliance.
Late renewal
A late renewal adds a late fee.

To keep your proof in order, see what to keep for a CE audit, which covers every state’s retention period and what the audit notice asks for.

Credential stack

Every credential a New Hampshire PMHNP renews

Each one renews on its own date, and a lapse at any of them stops prescribing. The ANCC certification and DEA registration are the same in every state.

  1. APRNAdvanced Practice Registered Nurse
    New Hampshire · Biennial

    30 CE hours every 2 years, including 5 hours of pharmacology and 3 hours of pain management and addiction disorder (aprns with a DEA registration).

    Requirements above
  2. RNRegistered Nurse
    New Hampshire · Biennial

    No fixed CE hour total applies to a board-certified, prescribing PMHNP.

    Requirements above
  3. CSRState Controlled Substance Registration
    New Hampshire

    New Hampshire does not issue a separate CSR.

  4. PMHNP-BCPsychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, Board Certified
    ANCC · Every 5 years

    75 CE hours every 5 years, including 25 hours of pharmacology.

    PMHNP-BC renewal requirements
  5. DEADEA Registration
    DEA · Triennial

    No recurring CE hours, but a one-time training applies.

    DEA renewal requirements
Your hours

Check where you stand

Enter the hours you have completed this cycle to see what is left before your renewal.

Your result appears here as you enter hours.

Also hold a New Hampshire Psychologist or LPC license? Each board runs its own CE cycle. See the New Hampshire Psychologist and New Hampshire LPC requirements.

Full board policy details
  • Two licenses, one set of hours. The RN license and the APRN license are renewed on separate applications ("Application for License Renewal: Registered (RN) and Practical Nurse (LPN)" and "Application for License Renewal: Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (A.P.R.N.)", Nur 401.01(a)(1)) with separate fees, both by midnight on the birthday of the renewal year. The APRN's 60 hours expressly include "30 educational contact hours to satisfy the requirements of RN continuing competence" (Nur 401.03(a)(1)), so the same 30 serve the RN row; the APRN row adds 30 more. Because the engine is coverage-based, the APRN row enforces the stack by asking 60 in-window hours (30 for a certificant), and the RN row asks 30 (none for a certificant).
  • Specialty hours are prose only. "At least 20 of the 30 hours shall be specific to the specialty practice area" (Nur 403.01(d); RSA 326-B:31, III: "specific to the specialty for which renewal or reinstatement is sought"). For a PMHNP that is psychiatric-mental health content. The engine has no specialty-population category and does not judge relevance, so the 20 are not enforced as a floor; the five pharmacology hours, which must be "appropriate to the specialty practice area", are. Log psychiatric, psychopharmacology and advanced-practice content for the APRN row.
  • National certification. Every APRN "licensed after September 1984" must "Document current national certification" at renewal, and one "holding lifetime certification" must "document continuing participation in the certification process" (Nur 401.03(a)(2)-(3); RSA 326-B:18, I(c) for initial licensure). Certification counts as 30 of the APRN's 60 hours (401.03(b)) and satisfies the RN's 30 (403.01(a)). The gates read the `pmhnp bc` row, the only national certification slug in this family's manifest; an FNP or AGNP certification slug added later must be added to the same gates. ANCC's own 75 hours are governed by us-pmhnp bc.yaml. The certification proof itself is checked by the board, not modeled as CE.
  • Pharmacology is owed by every APRN. The five hours attach to APRN license renewal, not to prescribing: New Hampshire gives every APRN "plenary authority to possess, compound, prescribe, administer, and dispense and distribute to clients controlled and non-controlled drugs" (RSA 326-B:11, III), with no separate prescriptive-authority certificate, collaborative agreement or renewal. So the pharmacology floor is gated on `license type eq aprn` alone, not on `prescribing`.
  • DEA prescribers: 3 hours of pain management and addiction disorder at every renewal (RSA 318-B:41, VI), gated on the `dea` sibling row because the statute's trigger is possessing a DEA number. The statute allows passing "an online examination" instead of the hours; a licensee who takes the examination should log it as a 3-hour pain management credit with the result as the certificate. The statute does not say the three hours sit inside the APRN's 30; the board's renewal checklist (secondary quotation; the checklist PDF itself was blocked) says "three of the five pharmacology hours must cover opioid prescribing, pain management, or substance abuse disorder". The rule counts the three toward the total but cannot force them to overlap the pharmacology floor; a course tagged both pain management and pharmacology satisfies both.
  • Opioid prescribing standards are practice rules, not CE. Nur 502 (adopted under RSA 318-B:41, I-II) sets the APRN's standards for prescribing opioids for acute and chronic non-cancer pain: history and examination, a risk assessment "such as the evidence-based screening tool Screener and Opioid Assessment for Patients with Pain (SOAPP)", written informed consent, treatment agreements, a 7-day ceiling in emergency and urgent-care settings (Nur 502.04(i)), and querying the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program "prior to prescribing an initial schedule II, III, and IV opioids ... and then periodically and at least twice per year" (Nur 502.06). None of these carries hours, so nothing is modeled; they belong to the practice, not the renewal.
  • No state controlled-substance registration. RSA 326-B:11, III grants controlled-drug authority with the APRN license; RSA 318-B:10, I authorizes "A practitioner other than a veterinarian, in good faith, in the course of his professional practice, and for a legitimate medical purpose" to "administer and prescribe controlled drugs" without any state registration. Prescribers who possess a DEA number must register with the Controlled Drug Prescription Health and Safety Program (RSA 126-A:89 to 126-A:96; RSA 318-B:41, VI), the state PDMP, which is an account, not a license to prescribe, and carries no CE beyond the three hours above. No `csr` row for New Hampshire.
  • No other topic mandates. New Hampshire has no implicit bias, human trafficking, suicide prevention, domestic violence, infection control, ethics or jurisprudence CE for RNs or APRNs: RSA 326-B:31 and Nur 403.01 name only the hour totals, the APRN specialty and pharmacology hours, and RSA 318-B:41, VI the DEA prescriber hours. The RN has no practice- hour test in the current rules (Nur 401.01 as amended effective September 27, 2023); a "400 working hours within 4 years" line that secondary sources attribute to the board's APRN checklist could not be checked against the blocked checklist and is not modeled.
  • Rule status. Nur 403.01 (the CE content rule) carries an expiration date of October 22, 2025 under RSA 541-A:17 in the LII copy, and the board filed Initial Proposal 2026-68 (March 26, 2026) to adopt, repeal, readopt and readopt with amendment the Nur 400 chapter. The hour figures do not depend on the readoption: RSA 326-B:31 states the 30 and 30, the 20 specialty and the 5 pharmacology hours, and Nur 401.03 (effective through September 27, 2033) states the 60 and the certification credit. Recheck the readopted Nur 403 once the final proposal is adopted, particularly whether it keeps the RN's certification alternative and whether it writes the three DEA hours into the rule.
  • Inactive status, reinstatement and re-entry. "Licensees may request inactive status in lieu of complying with the specific continuing education requirements of Nur 403" (Nur 403.05(f)). An expired license lapses one year after expiration and may then be reinstated, not renewed (RSA 310:8, III); reinstatement documents the same hours (Nur 401.03(a): "renewal or reinstatement"). A nurse without an active RN or LPN license anywhere for 5 or more years completes a re-entry program, either a 120-hour refresher course or an approved individualized program (Nur 401.02); an APRN without an active APRN license for 5 or more years completes a re-entry program including "A minimum of 3 credit hours or minimum of 30 class hours in pharmacology at the advanced nurse practitioner level" and "A minimum of 200 hours clinical practice supervised" (Nur 401.04). None of these is modeled.
  • Compacts. New Hampshire is a Nurse Licensure Compact state; RN renewals "shall comply with the Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC) Model Rules and Regulations" (Nur 401.01(b); RSA 326-B:9). A New Hampshire APRN must "Verify current licensure as an RN in NH or another compact state" (Nur 401.03(a)(4)), so an APRN whose RN is another compact state's multistate license has no New Hampshire RN row; the APRN row still asks the full 60 (30 for a certificant), because 401.03(a)(1) counts the RN hours inside the APRN renewal regardless of where the RN license is held. New Hampshire has not enacted the APRN Compact.

New Hampshire PMHNP CE: frequently asked questions

Which credentials does a New Hampshire PMHNP renew?

4 separate credentials, each on its own renewal date: the APRN (New Hampshire, biennial), the RN (New Hampshire, biennial), the PMHNP-BC (ANCC, every 5 years), and the DEA (DEA, triennial). New Hampshire issues no separate CSR. A lapse at any one of them stops prescribing.

How many CE hours do New Hampshire PMHNP licensees need?

New Hampshire requires 30 continuing education hours every 2 years to renew a PMHNP license. The renewal cycle is biennial and is tied to your license's renewal (expiration) date.

How often do New Hampshire PMHNP licensees renew?

The renewal cycle is biennial and is tied to your license's renewal (expiration) date.

How much does New Hampshire PMHNP license renewal cost?

The board's renewal fee is $80 every 2 years, per the New Hampshire board fee schedule. CE course costs are separate and set by course providers.

Are there subject-specific CE requirements for New Hampshire PMHNP licensees?

Yes. New Hampshire requires 5 hours of pharmacology, 3 hours of pain management and addiction disorder (aprns with a DEA registration).

Sources and verification

State source
New Hampshire board rule
Fee schedule
New Hampshire board fee schedule
Last verified
October 2026
Ruleset version
2026.3

We reviewed this page against the New Hampshire board source, and we refresh it from the compiled ruleset above. Methodology and disclaimer. Compliance data is for guidance only, not legal or board advice. Always confirm requirements with your licensing board before renewing. See something wrong? Report it

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New Hampshire guides & data

What to keep for a CE audit →Learn what boards ask for in a CE audit, how long each state says to keep certificates, and what the notice looks like, then use the printable checklist.New Hampshire mental health workforce data →7,050 active providers, or 498.1 per 100,000 residents, ranked 19 of 51. The page includes a county density map and free CSV downloads.

Other New Hampshire CE requirement pages

New Hampshire LPCNew Hampshire LMFTNew Hampshire LCSWNew Hampshire PsychologistNew Hampshire Addiction Counselor

PMHNP CE requirements in other states