If you hold a Nebraska RN or APRN license, it expires on October 31, 2026. That is a few weeks out, and if you are a nurse practitioner, the amount you need to spend on continuing education to get across that line may be zero.
There is also a rule change that most continuing education sites have not caught up with yet, and it changes what counts. Worth five minutes before you start clicking through courses.
What Nebraska actually checks when an NP renews
Four things, and only one of them involves continuing education at all.
- Current national certification in your role and population focus
- A current Nebraska RN license, or a multistate compact license in your primary state of residence
- If you have held the license more than five years, at least 2,080 hours of NP practice in the previous five years
- Three hours of opiate prescribing CE, but only if you prescribe controlled substances
What is not on that list is a contact hour requirement attached to the APRN license itself. Nebraska does not impose one.
Your certification already covers the RN side
Your NP license sits on an RN license, and the RN license renews on continued competency. Twenty contact hours is one accepted pathway. It is not the only one. Holding or maintaining current certification in a nursing specialty from a nationally recognized certifying organization is its own pathway.
You already have that. Nebraska requires national certification for your APRN license, so the thing you maintain for one requirement satisfies the other. No twenty hours needed.
Two things that trip people up here. If your Nebraska license was first issued during this renewal period, you do not owe CE for this first renewal at all. And if you live in another compact state, your RN license renews under that state’s rules rather than Nebraska’s.
The three opiate hours, and where to get them free
This applies only if you prescribe controlled substances. No DEA registration, no requirement.
Under Neb. Rev. Stat. 38-145(6), which came out of LB731 in 2018, prescribers including NPs and certified nurse midwives complete at least three hours of opiate prescribing CE every two years. A half hour of that three has to cover the prescription drug monitoring program.
Nebraska DHHS gives the whole thing away. Under the section labeled Physician Assistant, Nurse Practitioner, and Certified Nurse Midwife there are seven modules totaling 4.0 hours. You need 3.0. One combination that hits it exactly:
| Module | Hours |
|---|---|
| PDMP | 0.5 (required) |
| Pain Management | 1.0 |
| Naloxone | 0.5 |
| Acute Pain | 0.5 |
| Benzodiazepine and Opioid Tapering | 0.5 |
| Total | 3.0 |
The two remaining modules, The Art of a Difficult Conversation and Opioid Use in Older Adults, run 0.5 each if you would rather swap one in. The free modules live on the Nebraska DHHS Pain Management and Clinician Continuing Education page.
You are not required to use the state’s version. Nebraska says plainly that NPs and CNMs may take opiate prescribing education from other sources of their choice. The one caution the state adds is that PDMP content from outside Nebraska may not prepare you to use the Nebraska system.
Why a CE company is telling you where to get CE for free
Fair question. Here is how we work.
We monitor your Board. We tell you exactly what’s required. We actively point you to legitimate FREE CE from other organizations. And only after we’ve done that do we sell you what remains.
Renew Now CE maintains a human-verified directory of free mandated CE options, cross-checking each resource against state licensing requirements and confirming that both the course and certificate are actually free.
That last part matters more than it sounds. Plenty of “”free”” CE is free to watch and then charges you for the certificate, which is the only part your Board cares about. Nebraska’s modules are genuinely free end to end, certificate included. We checked.
The rule that changed, and why it matters here
The Nebraska Board of Nursing’s advisory opinion on continuing education was adopted in 2024 and revised in September 2025. It says that beginning with licensure renewal in 2025, non-peer-reviewed offerings are no longer accepted for renewal purposes. Nurses need approved nursing continuing education from an approved provider.
Now put that next to something DHHS says about its own free modules: they are not peer reviewed, and may not meet requirements for renewal of board certification.
Both statements are on the same agency’s website, and together they mean the free hours do exactly one job. They satisfy the opiate requirement. They do not count toward the twenty contact hours an RN or LPN needs, and they probably will not count toward your ANCC or AANPCB recertification.
Plenty of CE sites are still publishing Nebraska’s pre-2019 peer-review language, which the Board specifically removed. If you are cross-checking this against another site and the two disagree, the advisory opinion is the more current document.
Finish the free path
Nebraska does not collect hours electronically. You attest at renewal, and the Nursing Licensure Unit runs random audits. If you get pulled, you submit certificates totaling three hours. So download the PDF after each module instead of trusting that you will find the confirmation email in two years.
One more thing worth knowing: this requirement is temporary. The statute terminates January 1, 2029, which makes the October 2028 renewal the last one it applies to.
When paying is the better move
If your certification cycle is nowhere near due and you only need to clear Nebraska, take the free modules and stop reading. You are done, and it cost you nothing.
Paying earns its keep when the same hours can do more than one job. ANCC wants 75 CE hours over five years with 25 in pharmacology, plus one professional development category, and as of January 14, 2026 those activities have to fall inside your designated certification period. AANPCB wants 100 contact hours with 25 in advanced pharmacology, plus 1,000 practice hours.
So if your recertification is coming up anyway, there is a version of this that saves you a step. Our 25-hour ANCC pharmacology package includes a six-hour course on safe opioid prescribing and substance use disorder pharmacology. Those hours are accredited, they count toward your 25 pharmacotherapeutics hours, and they cover Nebraska’s opiate prescribing content. Pair them with the free 0.5-hour PDMP module from DHHS, which is Nebraska specific in a way an outside course will not be, and you have satisfied LB731 with hours that were doing another job already.
One caveat we would rather say up front than have you discover at checkout. That package is accredited through ANCC, provider P0557, and it satisfies ANCC renewal only. If your credential ends in -BC it is ANCC and the package applies. If it ends in -C it came from AANPCB and this package does not meet your pharmacology requirement. Check your certification card before you buy anything, from us or anyone else.
Before you close this tab
- Note the deadline: October 31, 2026 for RN and APRN. LPNs renew October 31, 2027.
- Confirm your national certification is current and will stay current through the renewal.
- If you prescribe controlled substances, knock out the three free hours and save every certificate.
- If your recertification is coming up, put those hours toward accredited pharmacology instead and let them count twice.
Renew Now CE monitors state continuing education requirements so you don’t have to. We show you legitimate free options when they’re available and offer affordable, accredited CE for the requirements you still need to complete.
We are accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation, provider number P0557, which is one of the approval bodies the Nebraska Board names by example in its advisory opinion.
Sources
- Neb. Rev. Stat. 38-145(6), from LB731 (2018)
- Nebraska DHHS, Nursing Controlled Substance Information
- Nebraska DHHS, Nurse Licensing Renewal and Continuing Education
- Nebraska Board of Nursing Advisory Opinion, Continuing Education, adopted 2024, revised September 2025. Issued under Neb. Rev. Stat. 38-2216(2) and non-binding.
- ANCC Certification Renewal Handbook; AANPCB recertification requirements
