Maine Nurse Practitioner CE Requirements

• Licenses renew every 2 years (biennial).
• The APRN license renews concurrently with the RN license.

• 50 contact hours per 2-year period of continuing education in nursing, medicine, or allied health in the practice area for which the individual is approved as an APRN (Board of Nursing Chapter 8 rules).
• Evidence of current national certification is also required.
• Hours are attested under oath and subject to random or targeted audit; keep documentation for two renewal periods.

• No recurring pharmacology-hour quota per renewal — the 50 hours must be in the APRN's practice area but are not pharmacology-specific.
• Pharmacology requirements are entry and reactivation gates (Chapter 8, Section 6)
  • 45 contact hours (or 3 credits) of pharmacology for initial prescriptive approval
  • 15 contact hours of pharmacology if the APRN has not prescribed in the past 2 years before resuming prescribing
  • 45 hours if the APRN has not prescribed in the past 5 years

• 3 hours of opioid-medication-prescribing education every 2 years for APRNs who prescribe opioids (Maine's opioid prescriber CE law, PL 2015 ch. 488 framework)
  • Commonly folded into the 50-hour total
• The federal one-time 8-hour DEA MATE training also applies to DEA registrants.

• A PMHNP who does not prescribe opioids may not need the 3-hour opioid CE.

Official sources