California Nurse Practitioner CE Requirements

• Licenses renew every 2 years (biennial).

• 30 contact hours of BRN-approved CE every two years to renew the RN license (16 CCR 1451).
  • NP certification renews with the RN license — no separate additional hourly total for the NP certificate
• First renewal after passing NCLEX within 2 years is CE-exempt, except for a 1-hour implicit bias requirement.

• California has no per-renewal pharmacology hour quota for NPs.
• The pharmacology-adjacent requirement is the Schedule II controlled-substances course tied to furnishing authority (see Controlled-substance CE).

• NPs with an active furnishing number who are authorized to furnish Schedule II controlled substances and are DEA-registered must complete, as part of their CE, a course covering Schedule II controlled substances and the risks of addiction, per board standards (BPC 2836.1(g)).
  • The Board sets the standards for this course; no specific hour count is fixed in the statute, and the course counts within the 30 required hours (BPC 2836.1(g)).
• Effective Jan 1, 2025: NPs providing primary care to a patient population more than 25% age 65+ must take at least 6 of the 30 hours (20% of mandatory CE) in gerontology, special care needs of patients with dementia, or care of older patients (SB 639, Stats. 2024, ch. 336; BPC 2811.5).

• The Schedule II course requirement comes from BPC 2836.1; the 3-hour figure is the board-standard course length cited by multiple secondary sources rather than a number printed in the statute — treat the hour count as medium confidence, the requirement itself as high.
• AB 890 NPs (103/104 status) have transition-to-practice requirements but no extra per-renewal CE hours.
• For a PMHNP, the practical requirement is 30 BRN-approved hours per 2 years, including the Schedule II course if furnishing Schedule II drugs (e.g., stimulants).

Official sources