Virginia Nurse License Verification Scraper

Verify registered nurse, licensed practical nurse, advanced practice registered nurse, nurse aide, and nursing home administrator licenses issued by the Virginia Department of Health Professions (DHP), Board of Nursing. Search by name and/or ZIP code, or look up an exact license number — straight from the DHP's own public License Lookup tool (dhp.virginiainteractive.org). No login, no API key, no proxy required.

What this actor does

• Two modes: search (name / ZIP / occupation / status) and byLicenseNumber (exact license-number lookup, one or many)
• Fourteen Board of Nursing occupation types: Registered Nurse, Licensed Practical Nurse, Advanced Practice Registered Nurse, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Authorization to Prescribe, Nurse Aide, Advanced Certified Nurse Aide, Medication Aide, Nursing Home Administrator (and its in-training/preceptor variants), plus restricted-volunteer variants — search one at a time, pick a custom multi-select subset, or search across all of them at once
• License status: filter to current or expired licensees, or filter client-side by the exact status text on file (e.g. "Active", "Suspended", "Revoked", "Probation", "Expired-Compact" for multistate Nurse Licensure Compact licenses)
• Full record: license number, occupation, name, raw mailing address plus parsed city/state/ZIP, Nurse Licensure Compact designation (Multi-State Privilege vs. Valid Virginia Only, where published), initial license date, expiration date, current status, and whether DHP has additional public disciplinary information on file (with a link when available)
• Empty fields are omitted — a field only appears when DHP actually published that data for the licensee

Output per license

• licenseNumber — 10-digit Virginia DHP license number
• occupation — e.g. Registered Nurse, Licensed Practical Nurse, Nurse Aide
• specialization — Nurse Licensure Compact designation ("Multi-State Privilege" or "Valid Virginia Only"), when DHP publishes one for the licensee's occupation (RN/LPN only; not shown for e.g. Nurse Aide)
• fullName
• address — raw mailing address string as published by DHP
• city, state, zipCode — parsed from address (may be outside Virginia)
• initialLicenseDate, expireDate — ISO dates
• licenseStatus — raw status text as published by DHP (includes Nurse Licensure Compact status where applicable)
• hasAdditionalPublicInformation — true when DHP must make additional disciplinary/administrative records available under Virginia Code §54.1-2400.2.H
• additionalPublicInformationUrl — link to that additional information, when provided
• profileUrl / sourceUrl — canonical DHP License Lookup detail page
• recordType: "nurseLicense", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search / byLicenseNumber
lastName	string	Johnson	Licensee last name (mode=search; required unless zipCode given)
firstName	string	Mary	Licensee first name (mode=search)
zipCode	string	–	Licensee mailing ZIP (mode=search; required unless lastName given)
occupation	string	Registered Nurse	One Board of Nursing occupation, or "Any" (mode=search)
occupations	array	–	Custom multi-select subset of occupations (mode=search); overrides occupation when non-empty
addressState	string	–	Filter by licensee's mailing-address US state (mode=search)
licenseStatus	string	any	any / current / expired (mode=search)
statusContainsFilter	string	–	Only emit records whose status text contains this (case-insensitive)
licenseNumbers	array	["0001019704"]	License numbers to verify (mode=byLicenseNumber)
maxItems	int	20	Hard cap on emitted records (1–300)

Examples

Example: search by last name (default occupation = Registered Nurse)

{
  "mode": "search",
  "lastName": "Johnson",
  "firstName": "Mary",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: search across all nursing occupation types

{
  "mode": "search",
  "lastName": "Patel",
  "occupation": "any",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: exact license number lookup

{
  "mode": "byLicenseNumber",
  "licenseNumbers": ["0001019704", "0002012345"]
}

Example: current licensed practical nurses in a ZIP code

{
  "mode": "search",
  "zipCode": "23219",
  "occupation": "2",
  "licenseStatus": "current",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: custom occupation subset (RN + LPN only)

{
  "mode": "search",
  "lastName": "Williams",
  "firstName": "Mary",
  "occupations": ["1", "2"],
  "maxItems": 30
}

Use cases

• Credentialing & primary source verification — confirm a nurse's license is current before onboarding, matching Joint Commission primary-source verification requirements
• Staffing agencies & travel nursing platforms — bulk-verify nurse licenses across a roster, including multistate Nurse Licensure Compact status
• Healthcare compliance & KYC — screen providers for disciplinary flags before contracting
• Long-term care & nursing home operators — verify nurse aide and nursing home administrator credentials
• Patient safety research & journalism — check license status and public disciplinary history for accountability reporting

FAQ

What is the data source? The Virginia Department of Health Professions' public License Lookup tool (dhp.virginiainteractive.org/Lookup/Index). This actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by DHP or the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Is a login or API key required? No. DHP's License Lookup is fully public and free to use.

Why did filtering statusContainsFilter: "active" also return an "Inactive" record? The filter is a plain case-insensitive substring match against the exact status text DHP publishes, and "Inactive" contains the substring "active". Use a more specific phrase (e.g. "Current Active") if you need to exclude Inactive records. Note this filter also triggers a detail-page fetch per candidate (to read the real status text), so searches using it take a little longer than the default summary search.

Why does this only cover Virginia? DHP licenses nurses who practice in Virginia (some of whom live out of state under the Nurse Licensure Compact). It is a single-state authoritative source, the same scope as this repository's other state-licensing-board actors (e.g. contractor and real estate license scrapers). It does not aggregate Nursys or other states' boards of nursing.

What does "Your search returned too many records" mean? DHP's own search caps very broad queries (e.g. a common surname with no other filters). Add a first name, ZIP code, or narrow the occupation to get results under that cap — this actor reports the condition via a clean status message rather than guessing at a partial result set.

Why do some license numbers in byLicenseNumber return nothing? DHP's lookup only returns unexpired records back to January 1, 2000, plus all currently active records. A license expired before that date, or a mistyped number, will return no match.

How fresh is the data? Every run fetches live pages directly from dhp.virginiainteractive.org — DHP itself refreshes the underlying data continuously ("Current as of" timestamp is shown on every page). There is no caching in this actor.

Why does byLicenseNumber with many numbers (or statusContainsFilter, which fetches one detail page per candidate) sometimes take longer than expected? DHP occasionally gates its License Detail page behind a reCAPTCHA challenge after several detail-page requests land close together on one session. This actor detects that challenge page and backs off before retrying (rather than reporting the license as not found), so detail-page-heavy runs (many license numbers, or a name search combined with statusContainsFilter) are throttled to one request at a time with a short delay between them. This trades a little speed for reliability — every requested license is still resolved.

Data Source / Limitations

• For complete, reliable results, include a first name. DHP's own backend applies stricter rate-limiting to broad "last name only" searches (no first name) from automated/cloud clients, which can return noticeably fewer records than the true total. Combining first name + last name (or an exact license number) — the natural way to verify one specific nurse — is not affected and returns complete, accurate results every time. If you need a broad roster of everyone with a given surname, run the search from a residential connection instead.
• Single-state scope (Virginia DHP, Board of Nursing occupations only).
• licenseStatus is free text exactly as published by DHP — it is not a fixed enum, since DHP does not publish an exhaustive list of every possible status.
• Looking up by license number returns whatever license is on file for that number, even if it belongs to an occupation outside this actor's nursing scope (DHP license numbers are shared across all professions it regulates).
• Addresses are mailing addresses only (city/state/ZIP) — DHP does not publish street addresses in the public lookup.
• DHP's site also offers a third search form (last 4 digits of SSN + last name). This actor does not expose it — the two modes above already cover every reliable name/ZIP/occupation/status and exact-license-number lookup path, and we intentionally avoid asking users to submit even partial SSN data.