Florida RN License Renewal: Steps, CE Requirements & Fees

The Florida Board of Nursing requires 24 contact hours of CE per two-year renewal cycle. Every hour must be reported to CE Broker by the CE provider — the state uses CE Broker as the system of record, and it is the single biggest source of renewal delays in Florida. A course you took, paid for, and even completed does not count until the provider posts it to CE Broker and the topic tag matches one of the Board's mandatory categories.

Mandatory topics that must sit inside the 24 hours:

• Prevention of medical errors — 2 hours, every renewal.
• Florida laws and rules — 2 hours, every other biennium.
• Recognizing impairment in the workplace — 2 hours, every other biennium.
• Human trafficking — 1 hour, every renewal.
• Domestic violence — 2 hours, every third biennium.
• HIV/AIDS — one-time requirement.

The remaining hours beyond the mandatory topics can be any Board-approved general nursing continuing education. Because "every other biennium" and "every third biennium" topics rotate on a schedule tied to your own renewal history rather than the calendar, the safest practice is to treat CE Broker's compliance dashboard as the authority on what's due this cycle rather than trying to track the rotation manually.

Fingerprints are now a renewal requirement. Since July 1, 2025 (HB 975, s. 456.0135 F.S.) the Department of Health will not approve an RN renewal unless a Level 2 electronic fingerprint screening is on file for you in the Care Provider Background Screening Clearinghouse. If you were fingerprinted for initial licensure after January 1, 2013 and your prints are still retained, you are covered — check the Clearinghouse before you renew. If you were licensed before 2013, have never been screened for a Florida health license, or your retention has expired, you need a new Livescan from an FDLE-approved vendor with the Board of Nursing's ORI number (EDOH4420Z — confirm it on the Board's renewal page; prints submitted under the wrong ORI are not delivered to the Board). Vendor fees run roughly $30–$75, and Clearinghouse retention is $43.25 every five years. Do this at least 90 days before expiration; results that arrive after the deadline mean a late renewal.

Position CE Broker and Trust correctly: CE Broker is the state's compliance ledger — it is what MQA checks before it will let your renewal go through. Trust complements it — it holds your certificates on your phone as a backup in case a provider's CE Broker post is delayed or wrong, reminds you at 90, 60, 30, and 7 days before your deadline, and links to CE Broker and MQA so you can act on the reminder instead of discovering a gap during renewal week.

Florida's 24-hour requirement is unusual for how much of it is prescribed by topic rather than left to the licensee's discretion. Roughly a third of the hours in any given cycle are locked to specific mandatory subjects, and the rotation ("every renewal" vs. "every other biennium" vs. "every third biennium") means the exact list of what's due can differ from one licensee to the next even though everyone renews on the same 24-hour total.

Practically, that means two RNs renewing in the same month can have different mandatory-topic checklists depending on how long they've been licensed and which biennium they're in. CE Broker tracks this per-license, so the compliance dashboard — not a generic checklist — is the correct source for what you personally owe this cycle.

Fingerprint screening is now checked at renewal — HB 975 (2024), s. 456.0135 F.S., effective for all practitioners July 1, 2025. The Department will not approve a renewal unless a Level 2 screening is retained for you in the Care Provider Background Screening Clearinghouse.

The 24-hour total, the $75 active-to-active fee, the CE Broker reporting requirement, and the core mandatory-topic list (medical errors, laws and rules, impairment, human trafficking, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS) remain the framework the Florida Board of Nursing has used for recent renewal cycles. There is no new mandatory-topic addition or fee change reflected on the Board's current renewal page as of this review.

What licensees should still check each cycle: which of the rotating mandatory topics (Florida laws and rules, impairment, domestic violence) falls due for your specific biennium, since that is determined by your renewal history rather than a fixed calendar year. CE Broker's compliance tracker reflects this automatically; do not rely on a generic checklist from a prior renewal.

A newly licensed Florida RN's first renewal falls on the biennial cycle assigned at initial licensure, shown on your MQA profile — not on a fixed date tied to your exam pass date. Some first-time renewals fall inside a shorter-than-24-month window if licensure happened partway through a renewal group's cycle; CE Broker and your MQA profile reflect any proration that applies to your specific renewal date.

New RNs should confirm two things well before their first renewal deadline: that their CE Broker account is linked to their correct license number, and that any CE completed during onboarding or orientation was reported by an approved Florida provider rather than an out-of-state or employer-internal course that never reaches CE Broker. A course that was genuinely completed but never posted to CE Broker will not satisfy the Board at renewal.