Getting Your DHA License from Nepal: A Guide for Nepali Nurses

Nepal sends nurses to the Gulf in large numbers, and almost the whole DHA licensing journey can be completed from Nepal without travelling to Dubai first. But Nepali applicants have to clear one question before they spend a rupee, and it is not the one most people expect: Nepal and the UAE do not use the word “Registered Nurse” to mean the same thing. This guide deals with that first, walks the sequence, and then covers the one extra step Nepal adds at the very end that no other country in this series has.

Start here: your Nepali title is not the title you are applying for

The Nepal Nursing Council publishes its register by category, and the two big ones are ANM (Auxiliary Nurse Midwife) and Registered Nurse. Crucially, the Registered Nurse category in Nepal covers both routes into staff nursing:

• PCL Nursing— the Proficiency Certificate Level in Nursing, the “staff nurse” route, awarded by CTEVT. Its official curriculum states the programme runs for three academic years.
• BSc Nursing / BN— the university bachelor's degrees, either entered directly or taken post-basic after PCL.

The UAE's Unified Professional Qualification Requirements (PQR) does not read the Nepali register. It assigns you a title from the qualification you hold, and the two entry titles sit on different rows:

• Registered Nurse— a bachelor's degree in nursing, minimum three years full-time.
• Assistant Nurse — a diploma of nursing, not less than 18 months course duration.

Three things soften that, and all three are worth knowing up front:

• Don't guess — get it assessed. The DHA publishes a free Self Assessment Tool on Sheryan that checks your profile against the PQR and needs no documents and no fee. Run it before you commit to anything.
• Unusual credentials can be referred. Qualifications not listed in the PQR can go to the PQR Committee, which may review them and grant an appropriate title. An award that does not map cleanly is a case to be assessed, not an automatic no.
• The upgrade route exists.Under the PQR, a nurse qualified with a bachelor's degree but licensed as an Assistant Nurse may apply for a title upgrade — provided their experience as an assistant nurse has not exceeded five years. If you are part-way through a post-basic BN, the order in which you apply is worth planning now rather than later.

Full detail, including the distance-learning exclusion and the gap-of-practice rules, is in our DHA eligibility guide. Confirm the current PQR version on Sheryan — the table is revised.

The reassurance: you can do this from Nepal

• The DHA application is online.You create your profile, upload documents and track progress through the DHA's Sheryan portal from anywhere in Nepal.
• The exam is available locally. The DHA exam is delivered by Prometric, and an authorised Prometric test centre in Kathmandu is commonly cited as offering it — so you can normally sit the exam here rather than flying to Dubai to test. Confirm the current active centres and available seats on prometric.com when you book.

You typically only need to be in Dubai later, once you have an employer and are moving for the job itself.

Your Nepal Nursing Council paperwork

Everything the DHA and DataFlow ask about your professional standing comes back to the Nepal Nursing Council (NNC) in Bansbari, Kathmandu. Two things do the work:

• A current NNC licence. Nepali nursing licences are renewed periodically, and an expired one is a very common and entirely avoidable reason for an application to stall. It also blocks the next item, so check your renewal status before you start rather than after.
• The NNC verification letter— Nepal's equivalent of a Certificate of Good Standing, and the document a foreign regulator or DataFlow will want.

The Council publishes the required documents for a verification letter on its own site. At the time of writing they are:

• An application addressed to the Registrar of the Nepal Nursing Council, stating your current address, the destination and the purpose.
• The requesting institution's own form, if the receiving body has one.
• Colour copies of both sides of your nursing licence certificate. The Council is explicit that the licence must be current.
• Your transcript and character certificate at the registered nursing level — the level you are registered at, not a lower or later one.
• A photocopy of the identification page of a valid passport.
• A bank depositinto the Council's account, with the original payment voucher submitted alongside the application.

A verification letter is a point-in-time document with a limited validity window, so time your request so it is still valid when you submit. See our Good Standing guide for how those windows work and why getting the timing wrong means paying twice.

The sequence, step by step

1. Confirm your title and gather documents

Run the Sheryan Self Assessment, then prepare your core documents, which typically include:

• NNC registration certificate and a current licence
• Nursing qualification and transcripts — your PCL Nursing certificate, BSc Nursing or BN degree, plus the academic records. The transcript matters: the Authorities use it to work out which disciplines your programme actually covered.
• NNC verification letter (Good Standing)
• Employment and experience certificates from your hospitals
• Passport and passport photo
• English proficiency results if required for your case

Nepali nursing programmes are largely taught and examined in English, which often helps, but that is not the same as an exemption — confirm the current requirement for your situation on Sheryan and see our English-requirement guide.

2. Create your Sheryan account and submit

Register on Sheryan, complete the eligibility step, and upload your documents. Before you do, reconcile your name and date of birth across every document — see the Nepal-specific warnings below, because this is where Nepali applications lose the most time.

3. DataFlow Primary Source Verification (PSV)

Your documents go to the DataFlow Group, which contacts the issuing bodies directly to confirm they are authentic. For a Nepali applicant that usually means three separate chains: your awarding body for the qualification, the NNC for your registration and licence, and your past employers for experience. This is usually the longest stage. See our DataFlow guide for how to avoid rejections.

4. Receive your DHA eligibility ID / Authorization to Test

Once eligibility is confirmed and verification is progressing, you receive your DHA eligibility number / ATT. This is what unlocks exam booking — you cannot schedule before it.

5. Book and sit the Prometric exam

Log in to prometric.com, choose your centre and pick your date. Bring a valid original passport whose name matches your booking exactly, arrive early, and expect biometric and ID checks. See our exam-format guide for the full test-day logistics, and the attempts and retakes rules before you book, because attempts are limited.

6. Pass, register, and activate with an employer

After you pass, your result feeds into your DHA record, allowing DHA registration. The final licence activation step is completed by your Dubai employer in Sheryan once you have a job offer. See what happens after you pass.

The step Nepal adds: your DoFE labour permit

This is the part that catches Nepali nurses out, because it sits outside the licensing story entirely and nothing on the DHA side will mention it. A DHA licence lets you practise. A UAE work permit and residence visa let you live and work there — that track is covered in our UAE work visa guide. But a Nepali citizen leaving Nepal for foreign employment also needs clearance from their own government, and that is the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE) under the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security.

The Department runs this online, and its own service list is the thing to read: online labour approval through the FEIMS system, a pre-approval stage, and labour permit verification by sticker. It also publishes registers of licensed recruitment agencies, approved orientation centres, health facilities and partner banks — those registers are the cheapest due diligence available to you.

Check any agency against the DoFE register of licensed agencies before you engage one, and read which recruitment fees are actually yours to pay first. The short version: the DataFlow, exam and licence fees you pay directly to those bodies are legitimately yours; being charged for a job offer is not.

Practical points for Nepali applicants

• Bikram Sambat versus Gregorian dates. Your Nepali certificates and citizenship documents carry BS dates; your passport carries AD. Conversions done at different times by different offices do not always agree, and a date of birth that reads one way on your transcript and another on your passport is exactly the kind of mismatch that stalls verification. Check every document against your passport before you upload anything, and get corrections made at the issuing office — not with a covering note at the DHA end.
• Reconcile your name everywhere.Nepali surnames are spelled inconsistently across offices, middle names appear and disappear, and some certificates carry a father's or husband's name where the passport does not. Make the passport the reference and fix the rest to match. If you have a maiden-name/married-name difference, prepare the supporting document up front.
• Attestation is a separate track from DataFlow. If you reach the visa stage, Nepali documents are authenticated through the issuing authority, then the Department of Consular Services at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tripureshwar, then the UAE mission. That is a visa requirement, not a licensing one — confusing the two costs money and months, so read our attestation guide before you start paying for stamps you may not need yet.
• Keep your NNC licence current throughout. It gates your verification letter, and letting it lapse mid-process means going back a step.
• Confirm every fee on the official Sheryan portal, DataFlow, prometric.com and the NNC page before paying — amounts and rules change.

The bottom line

A Nepali nurse can complete the DHA licensing journey — application, verification and exam — from Nepal, sitting the Prometric exam in Kathmandu and only heading to Dubai once employment and licence activation come together. Two things are worth settling before all the others: which PQR title your award actually maps to, because a PCL Nursing certificate and a BSc Nursing degree land on different rows even though Nepal registers both as Registered Nurses; and the fact that a DoFE labour permit is still ahead of you after the licence and the visa are done. Run the free Sheryan Self Assessment first, get your NNC licence current before you request the verification letter, and confirm the live details on the official portals. For the general walkthrough, see the step-by-step DHA nurse license process.