CNA Requirements in New Hampshire — Training, Exam & Registry

New Hampshire Board of Nursing, within the Office of Professional Licensure and Certification (OPLC), Division of Licensing and Board Administration. The Board sets the standards and approves the education programs; the Office issues the licence and keeps the registry — ‘The office shall maintain a registry of nursing assistants who qualify pursuant to 42 C.F.R. section 483.156’ (RSA 326-B:26, as amended effective July 1, 2024). administers certified nursing assistant licensing in New Hampshire. Every figure below is verified against the board’s own official pages and dated. Who must personally hold a credential — the contractor, the business, or the individual worker — is set out under Requirements.

What it’s called

New Hampshire’s own term is LICENSED NURSING ASSISTANT, abbreviated LNA, and it is a licence rather than a certificate or a registry listing — RSA 326-B:2, IV defines it as ‘an individual who holds a current license to provide client care under the direction of a registered nurse or licensed practical nurse.’ ‘CNA’ and ‘certified nursing assistant’ are what the public and out-of-state employers say; New Hampshire issues no credential under either name, and the state’s own documents use LNA throughout — ‘Applications for LNA’, ‘LNA Education Program Certificate’, ‘LNA Reinstatement Application’. The federal vocabulary still appears where the federal rules bite: the Nurse Practice Act’s registry section is headed ‘Nursing Assistant Registry’ and points at 42 C.F.R. 483.156, and the Board’s own draft rules slip into ’nurse aides’ when describing who instructs them. FOUR NEIGHBOURING NEW HAMPSHIRE TERMS ARE NOT SYNONYMS: MEDICATION NURSING ASSISTANT (MNA) is an LNA holding a certificate of medication administration (RSA 326-B:2, VI and 326-B:27); CERTIFIED ASSISTED LIVING MEDICATION AIDE (CALMA) is a separate newer credential at RSA 326-B:14-a and 326-B:27-a whose rules were still at the advance-comment stage as of August 16, 2026; NURSE EXTERN is yet another status, governed by Nur 608, effective August 24, 2026; and ’nursing assistant trainee’ is not a New Hampshire status at all — the state has no published trainee window of the kind several other states operate. The education programme is called an LNA Education Program and the tester is called a Competency Testing Service or Competency Testing Agency.

License types & fees

Who does NOT need this license — exemptions

RSA 326-B:43 lists seven exemptions from the whole Nurse Practice Act, and three of them can reach a person doing nursing assistant work: ‘The provisions of this chapter shall not prohibit or limit: … II. The practice of nursing by persons enrolled in nursing programs approved by the board when such practice is part of their program of study. III. The furnishing of nursing assistance in an emergency. IV. Nursing services by anyone when done in accordance with the practice of the religious principles or tenets of any well-recognized church or denomination which relies upon prayer or spiritual means alone for healing.’ The remaining four cover federal-institution nurses licensed in another state, an out-of-state nurse accompanying a person ‘during the period of one visit not to exceed 2 months’, out-of-state nurses providing consulting services on a non-routine basis, and — the one most relevant to medication work — ‘The administration of medications, by any person employed or under contract, to provide direct care to clients receiving community-based services pursuant to RSA 135-C or RSA 171-A, provided that persons delivering such care who administer medications shall have successfully completed a medication administration educational program conducted by an RN and approved by the board.’ A RELATED CARVE-OUT SITS IN ITS OWN SECTION: RSA 326-B:45 is headed ‘Direct Care in Community-Based Services’, and RSA 326-B:48 covers ‘Nurses for Youth Camps, Organized Recreation, and Community-Sponsored Recreation’; neither section’s text was read as of August 16, 2026 and no claim is made about either. WHAT IS PROHIBITED RATHER THAN EXEMPT, from RSA 326-B:41: selling or fraudulently obtaining a licence; practising ‘without a license or when the license to do so has been revoked or suspended or when the license to do so has lapsed’; using ‘any designation tending to imply licensure as an RN, an LPN, or an LNA unless so licensed’; representing that a programme for the education of nursing assistants is board-approved when it is not; and disclosing or compiling the contents of licensing examinations. Note the third: in New Hampshire calling yourself an LNA without the licence is itself the offence, independent of what work you do.

Fees

$66 to the Office, and it is the same $66 three times over: the Board of Nursing fee schedule lists Licensed Nursing Assistant Application Fee $66.00, Renewal Fee $66.00 and Reinstatement Fee $66.00. A FOOTNOTE ON THE SCHEDULE EXPLAINS PART OF IT: the asterisk on all three LNA lines ‘Denotes inclusion of mandatory Professional Health Program (PHP) fee of $28.00 to be paid at the time of licensing’ — so a substantial share of the LNA fee is a health-programme assessment rather than a licensing charge, and the same $28 rides on the RN and LPN fees of $116. Fees are not refundable, and the Office warns against paying twice: ‘To avoid a delay in licensure, please do not submit multiple applications.’ RELATED FEES ON THE SAME SCHEDULE: Medication Nursing Assistant application, renewal and reinstatement $11.00 each; Temporary Licensed Practical Nurse and Temporary Registered Nurse applications $20.00; Registered Nurse and Licensed Practical Nurse $116.00; APRN $110.00; and education Program Approvals $250.00 for application, renewal and reinstatement. PAPER APPLICATIONS TAKE ONLY THREE PAYMENT FORMS: ‘Personal Check, Money Order or Cashier’s Check’, mailed with the application to the Office at 7 Eagle Square, Concord, NH 03301. NOT PAID TO THE OFFICE: the criminal history record check, which the statute assigns to the applicant — ‘The applicant shall bear the cost of a criminal history record check’ (RSA 326-B:15, IV) — and the cost of the education programme and of the written and clinical competency testing, neither of which the state sets or publishes. No examination fee appears anywhere on the Board of Nursing fee schedule.

Exam

A written test and a clinical test, both required, both taken through a New Hampshire approved tester rather than a national vendor. The statutory requirement is one line — an LNA applicant must ‘Pass an examination approved by the board’ (RSA 326-B:19, II) — and the Office turns it into a document requirement: the application must include the ‘Final Report for the Written and Clinical Competency Testing results’. WHAT IS TESTED AND THE PASS MARKS, from the Board’s proposed readoption of its nursing assistant rules: after completing the programme students are tested on the curriculum skills plus ‘Identifying hazardous conditions in the environment’, ‘Demonstrating emergency measures’, ‘Manipulating adaptive devices or special equipment’, ‘Recording stages of the developmental process’, ‘Recording intake or output’, ‘Noting abnormalities in behavior or bodily functions’, ‘Noting and recording results of simple laboratory tests’, ‘Identifying religious symbols and artifacts’, ‘Identifying nursing and medical equipment’, ‘Describing and reporting abuse’ and ‘Manipulating, and utilizing adaptive devices to promote rest, comfort, and independence’; and ‘Students shall achieve a grade of 70, or greater, in examinations testing for theoretical content; and a grade of “pass” on skills test.’ Those figures come from proposed rather than adopted rule text — see training_hours for why New Hampshire’s nursing assistant rules chapter is in that position. REPORTING: on passing, ’the program shall issue the student a written verification of completion’ showing the student’s name, the sponsoring institution, the date and ‘The number of hours of theoretical instruction and the number of hours of clinical instruction received by the student’, and all programmes report passers to the Office within five working days. ACCOMMODATIONS: the Board publishes a ‘Request for Nursing Assistant Competency Testing Accommodations Under the Americans with Disabilities Act’ requiring a personal statement, documentation from the programme coordinator including any accommodations already granted during the programme, diagnostic testing results by a qualified professional, and an interpretation of the scores with a rationale; an ADA Committee of the Board decides. NO LIMIT ON ATTEMPTS is published: RSA 326-B, the Office’s LNA pages and checklists, its competency-testing page and the Board’s proposed rules were all searched on 2026-08-16 and none states a maximum number of tries, so none is asserted here. RETESTING HAS A SECOND USE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE — passing the competency test satisfies the ‘active in practice’ condition for licence renewal, and the continuing-education rule provides that ‘Successful completion of a state nursing assistant examination may be used to fulfill such continuing education requirements.’

Renewal & continuing education

Every two years, and New Hampshire attaches BOTH a continuing-education requirement and an active-practice requirement to it. The statute: ‘All license renewals shall be issued every 2 years in accordance with RSA 310:8’, and a licensee who intends to keep practising must report any pending criminal charges, convictions or plea arrangements, have committed no acts that are grounds for discipline, ‘Meet continuing competence requirements as defined in rules adopted under RSA 541-A’, comply with any discipline order, and meet other board criteria (RSA 326-B:22). THE ACTIVE-PRACTICE TEST, as the Office publishes it for LNAs: ‘A minimum of 200 hours of nursing assistant related activities under the supervision of a licensed nurse within the 2 years immediately prior to the date of application — or successful completion of nursing assistant competency testing within 2 years prior to date of application.’ That is a genuine alternative, not a formality: an LNA who has not worked 200 hours can re-take the competency test instead. (For comparison on the same Office page: an MNA needs 50 hours, and an RN, LPN or APRN needs 400 hours over four years.) HOW YOU FILE: ‘Renewal applications are done online. Visit our online application portal’, and continuing education is tracked through CE Broker. THE ONE RULE THAT TRIPS PEOPLE: ‘You can’t renew an expired license in the portal. Please use the reinstatement application found below under REINSTATEMENT.’ RSA 310:8 sets the mechanics of the two-year cycle; that section sits in a different chapter, its text was not read as of August 16, 2026, and nothing here rests on it beyond the two-year interval RSA 326-B:22 states directly. 12 contact hours EVERY YEAR — an annual requirement, which is unusual in this cluster, where most states that require continuing education state it per two-year cycle and many require none at all. The statute is explicit: ‘An LNA shall complete 12 hours of continuing education in programs approved by the board each year, provided that licensees who hold a certificate of medication administration shall complete at least 4 hours of those 12 hours in medication administration’ (RSA 326-B:31, I). The Board’s rule says the same thing in the same units: ‘Nur 403.02 Continuing Education Requirements for LNA. Each applicant for renewal, reinstatement, or endorsement of an LNA license shall complete at least 12 contact hours per year of workshops, conferences, lectures, or in-service educational offerings that are designed to enhance nursing assistant knowledge, judgment, and skills. Successful completion of a state nursing assistant examination may be used to fulfill such continuing education requirements.’ The Office’s own summary states the same obligation across the two-year cycle — ‘24 contact hours in the two years immediately preceding licensure, conferences, lectures or other education offerings designed to enhance nursing assistant knowledge, judgment, and skills — or successful completion of nursing assistant competency test within 2 years of date of application’ — and adds, for MNAs, that ‘8 of the 24 required contact hours for LNA Licensure must be related to medication administration.’ WHAT COUNTS: the Board does not require branded credit. ‘The Board does not require that your contact hours be earned at conferences that provide “official” contact hours granted by a professional organization. However, the educational offering must: Have specific objectives that guide the learning; Pertain to and enhance the licensee’s knowledge, skills and judgment; Pertain to the licensee’s scope of practice; Have a method for evaluating the learner’s attainment of the objectives; Maintain a list of attendees.’ Academic credit converts at ‘one credit being the equivalent of 15 contact hours’, individualised learning counts hour-for-hour, and ‘There is no limit to the number of contact hours that can be completed through independent study.’ DOCUMENTATION: ‘The licensee shall maintain documentation of attendance that includes: the title, length and date of the offering and the name of the entity providing the offering.’ TWO BOARD INTERPRETATIONS SIT ON THE SAME PAGE AND ARE NOT ABOUT LNAs — READ THE HEADING. The Board published them under the heading ‘December 20, 2018 Board of Nursing Interpretation of Nur 403.01’, and Nur 403.01 is the continuing-education rule for licensed practical nurses, registered nurses and advanced practice registered nurses. Nur 403.02, quoted above, is the LNA’s rule. Both questions are worded for nurses as well: ‘Are nurses permitted to repeat the same educational offering in the same two year renewal period and receive credit from the board office for attending both? Yes’, and ‘Are courses such as glucometer training, use of IV pumps and back training (mandatory training for organizations) counted towards courses that “are designed to enhance nursing knowledge, judgment, and skills.”? Yes’ — where that closing phrase is Nur 403.01’s own wording, while Nur 403.02 says ’nursing assistant knowledge, judgment, and skills’. The Board has published no equivalent interpretation of the LNA rule. They are recorded here because they are the only published Board interpretations on the subject, and an LNA may well hear them applied by analogy — but they are not rulings about the LNA’s 12 hours, and this site will not present them as such. Hours are tracked through CE Broker.

How to apply

Applications are handled by New Hampshire Board of Nursing, within the Office of Professional Licensure and Certification (OPLC), Division of Licensing and Board Administration. The Board sets the standards and approves the education programs; the Office issues the licence and keeps the registry — ‘The office shall maintain a registry of nursing assistants who qualify pursuant to 42 C.F.R. section 483.156’ (RSA 326-B:26, as amended effective July 1, 2024).. Start at the official application page .

Verify a license in New Hampshire

New Hampshire Office of Professional Licensure and Certification (the licence lookup the Office links from its LNA pages as ‘License Lookup’) publishes a public license search . It covers The Office’s public licence lookup for every profession it licenses, LNAs among them; it is the tool the Office links from the LNA application page and from the Board of Nursing pages under the label ‘License Lookup’. WHAT A READER SHOULD EXPECT: the address does not open on a search form. It opens on an automated browser check — the page delivered says only ‘One moment, while we check your browser…’ — and the search form appears only after that check clears in a normal browser session. As of August 16, 2026 that check stands between the address and the form, so there is no published list of the fields the lookup offers and none is stated here. Two consequences follow. A search result has no web address of its own, so it cannot be bookmarked, emailed or cited. And anything watching this address automatically will see the browser check rather than the data behind it, which makes this lookup unmonitorable in practice. THE OFFICE OFFERS PAPER ALTERNATIVES for anyone who needs proof rather than a screen: it publishes request routes for a ‘Letter of Verification’, for a ‘Wall Certificate’, and for name and contact changes, all linked from the LNA application page.

Records come from New Hampshire Office of Professional Licensure and Certification (the licence lookup the Office links from its LNA pages as ‘License Lookup’)’s own system. LicensingAtlas does not hold license records and cannot confirm any individual’s status — the date on this page refers to the requirements described above, not to anyone’s credential.