Getting Your DHA License from Indonesia: A Guide for Indonesian Nurses

Indonesia is not an accidental nurse-sending country. The Ministry of Health, announcing Migrant Career Centers at 38 Poltekkes with KP2MI, put the numbers on the table itself: more than 42,000 health graduates a year, a projected surplus of more than 50,000 nurses by 2029, only around 10% of nursing graduates currently placed abroad — and Saudi Arabia and Qatar named alongside Japan and Germany as destinations. The state is actively building the pipeline you are trying to join.

Two questions decide your file before you spend a rupiah, and neither is the one most Indonesian nurses ask first. One: which of Indonesia's two nurse categories you are, because the Gulf reads that split almost exactly the way Indonesian law writes it. Two: which Gulf country you are going to, because Indonesia is an Apostille Convention state and only half the Gulf is — which makes your document chain either one stamp or four.

Indonesia already splits nurses in two. The UAE reads the same line.

Most country guides have to explain a mismatch between a home register and the Gulf's title table. Indonesia is the unusual case where the two systems agree — which is good news only if you know which side of the line you are on.

UU No. 38 Tahun 2014 tentang Keperawatan — the Nursing Law — sets out the categories in Article 4: nurses are perawat profesi (Ners and Ners spesialis) and perawat vokasi. Article 5 describes higher nursing education as vocational, academic and professional, with the vocational minimum being Diploma Tiga (D3) Keperawatan.

The UAE's Unified Professional Qualification Requirements (PQR) does not read the Indonesian register at all. It assigns a title from the award you hold, and its two entry rows are:

Put the two systems side by side and the practical mapping is hard to miss:

• S1 Keperawatan followed by the Ners profession programme — a bachelor's degree in nursing plus the professional stage. This is the award that reaches the Registered Nurse row.
• D3 Keperawatan (A.Md.Kep)— a three-year vocational diploma. It is a diploma, not a bachelor's degree, and on the PQR's own wording that lands on the Assistant Nurse row — even though you are a perawat in Indonesia, hold a full STR and have been running a ward.

If you hold a D3 and want the Registered Nurse row, the route is the same one Indonesian nurses already use domestically — the alih jenjang / extension programme into S1 plus Ners. One PQR rule matters enormously here and is easy to trip over: qualifications obtained through correspondence or distance-learning are explicitly not counted, and hybrid certificates are excluded other than those issued during exceptional periods such as the pandemic. A weekend or kelas karyawan programme is worth checking against that rule before you enrol, not after you graduate. The same logic applies for GNM holders in India — see the diploma-nurse guide for how the PQR Committee referral route works when an award does not sit neatly in the table.

Your STR, and what the 2023 Health Law changed

The PQR requires a valid home-country licence or registration to practise. For an Indonesian nurse that is your STR — Surat Tanda Registrasi, and it is the document DataFlow will go back to the issuing body to verify.

The important recent change: under UU No. 17 Tahun 2023 tentang Kesehatan, the STR is treated as an administrative registration and is now valid for liferather than renewable every five years, with registration administered centrally through the health ministry's integrated system and the Konsil Kesehatan Indonesia. PPNI publishes the practitioner-facing route at ppni-inna.org.

For a Gulf applicant that quietly removes the single most common home-registration failure in this whole series — arriving at verification with a registration that expired while you were working abroad. But two things do not follow from it:

• SIP is a different document. The Surat Izin Praktik is your practice permit, it is tied to a place of work, and it did not become lifetime along with the STR. Your SIP history is part of how you evidence where you actually practised, which is what the experience side of your file rests on.
• The transition is still settling. Records migrated from the older five-year system, and conversions do not always land cleanly. Check your own record on the official portal and fix anything wrong there — not with a covering letter at the Dubai end.

The PQR also says the validity of your registration should cover the minimum required experience for the title you are applying for, so a gap in registration is not merely a missing document — it can invalidate experience you were counting on. If you have been out of practice, read what a career break costs at each regulator.

The Certificate of Good Standing, and the two bodies in the chain

Every Gulf regulator wants proof that you are not restricted or prohibited from practising. In Indonesia this is the Certificate of Good Standing — the sertifikat kelaikan praktik — and the Konsil Kesehatan Indonesia FAQ sets out two details that decide your sequencing:

• It goes regulator to regulator.The certificate is sent to the destination country's regulatory body, as a soft file or physically — it is not simply handed to you to upload.
• It is valid three months from the date of issue.That is the shortest clock in your whole file. Requesting it early “to have it ready” is how nurses end up paying for it twice.

Before that, PPNI— the Indonesian National Nurses Association — sits in the chain. Its recommendation is the professional body's sign-off, and the requirements it publishes are the obvious ones: current PPNI membership, a valid STR, no serious sanction for a breach of the nursing code of ethics, and membership dues paid up. The dues condition is worth reading twice, because it is the one that stops applications belonging to nurses who let membership lapse while working overseas.

Our general treatment of the document — what every Gulf authority does with it, and the mistakes that get one rejected — is in the Good Standing Certificate guide.

The split that makes your paperwork short or long

This is the part of an Indonesian application that genuinely differs from every other country page in this series. Indonesia acceded to the Hague Apostille Convention, and the Ministry of Law is the competent authority that issues apostilles for Indonesian documents; the implementing regulation entered into force on 4 June 2022 and the service launched that month through portal.ahu.go.id.

An apostille only works if the destination is also a member. In the Gulf, three are and three are not — so the same ijazah, transcript and STR take two completely different roads depending on where you are going:

Two consequences worth planning around. First, if you are genuinely undecided between Riyadh and Dubai, the paperwork cost is not the same in both directions, and for an Indonesian applicant it favours Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman. Second, membership on oneside is not enough — both countries have to be in, which is precisely why the UAE route stays long for you even though Indonesia is a member. The full mechanics, and why an agent quoting a “standard attestation package” may be quoting you the wrong chain entirely, are in apostille versus attestation for Gulf nursing documents.

The second government in your file: KP2MI

Like the Philippines and India, Indonesia regulates its nurses' departure as well as their qualifications — which means your file can fail on a track that has nothing to do with licensing. The body is the Kementerian Pelindungan Pekerja Migran Indonesia (KP2MI/BP2MI).

Lawful placement runs either through a government-to-government scheme or through a licensed P3MI — a placement company — which must hold a SIP2MI, the recruitment permit, for the specific job order it is recruiting you against. A company with a licence but no SIP2MI for your role is not authorised to place you.

Placement procedure was restructured by Permen P2MI/BP2MI No. 2 Tahun 2026, in force from 5 March 2026, so anything an agent tells you about “the usual process” is worth checking against kp2mi.go.idrather than against a colleague's memory of their own departure.

The zero-cost rule, and why it probably does not mean what you were told

Article 30 of UU No. 18 Tahun 2017 on the protection of Indonesian migrant workers states the principle that an Indonesian migrant worker cannot be burdened with placement costs. It is quoted constantly, and it is quoted wrongly.

The implementing regulation that actually made placement free — Perka BP2MI No. 9 Tahun 2020 — did so for a named list of ten occupations: domestic worker, babysitter, child carer, elderly carer, cook, family driver, gardener, cleaner, farm worker and fishing-vessel crew. Nursing is not on that list.

So the honest question for a nurse is not “is placement free?” but “is this specific charge a recognised cost component, and is it written into my placement agreement?” Confirm the current cost components with KP2MI, get every charge itemised in writing before you pay, and keep receipts. What is never legitimate, in any country, is being charged for the job offer itself — the line the agency fees guide draws between fees that are genuinely yours and fees that are a red flag applies here unchanged.

English, the exam, and where you sit it

• English. Gulf regulators set an English requirement that is separate from your degree, and it catches Indonesian applicants who studied entirely in Bahasa Indonesia. Requirements, accepted tests and exemptions differ by authority — see the English requirement guide and confirm the current score on the authority's own portal.
• The exam. The DHA assessment is delivered through Prometric, which has test centres in Indonesia — but centre lists and availability change, so check prometric.com for what is live when you are ready to book. What the paper looks like is covered in the exam format guide, and which Gulf authorities test through Prometric versus another vendor is in the Prometric guide.
• You may not need the exam at all. Certain foreign licences and qualifications exempt you — worth checking before you pay for a test you did not need. See the exemption guide.

Practical points for Indonesian applicants

• The mononym problem.Many Indonesians have a single legal name, and Gulf systems are built around a given name plus a family name. Forms that will not accept one name, and staff who “helpfully” split or duplicate it, create a mismatch that follows you from the passport into the licence file. Decide how your name will be rendered once, use it everywhere, and read the name-mismatch guide before you fill in a single form.
• Academic titles are not part of your name. A.Md.Kep, S.Kep and Ns. appear on Indonesian certificates and employment documents but not in your passport. Keep the passport as the reference for every field that asks for a name, and let the titles live in the qualification evidence where they belong.
• Send the transcript, not just the ijazah. The PQR requires the academic transcript for credentialing — the authorities use it to see which disciplines your programme actually covered, and the degree certificate alone does not show that.
• Institutions that were renamed. Akper and STIKes institutions have merged into and been rebranded as Poltekkes and universities over the years. If the name on your ijazah no longer matches the institution DataFlow contacts, expect a query — and be ready with evidence of the rename from the institution itself. This is one of the standard causes of a stalled report; see what to do about an unable-to-verify report.
• Keep your PPNI membership current throughout. It gates the recommendation that gates your Good Standing Certificate. Letting it lapse mid-process means going back a step at the worst possible moment.
• Confirm every fee on Sheryan, DataFlow, prometric.com, kki.go.id and kp2mi.go.id before paying. Amounts and rules change, and nothing on this page is a quote.

The bottom line

An Indonesian nurse can run almost the whole licensing journey from Indonesia — registration, Good Standing, verification and the exam — before anything requires a flight. Three things are worth settling before all the others. Whether your award is a D3 or S1-plus-Ners, because Indonesian law's own vocational/professional split lands close to the PQR's Assistant Nurse / Registered Nurse boundary and decides which job you are applying for. Which Gulf country you are heading to, because Indonesia's Apostille membership makes your paperwork one stamp for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman and a full consular chain for the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait. And whether your placement company is listed and active on SISKOP2MI, which takes five minutes and is the only step here that protects you from losing everything else.

Then run the free Sheryan Self Assessment, check your STR record on the official portal, and work through the step-by-step DHA nurse license process — or, if you have not chosen a regulator yet, the authority comparison first.

Official sources

• Konsil Kesehatan Indonesia — registration and the Certificate of Good Standing for practice abroad: kki.go.id and its FAQ
• Kementerian Kesehatan — kemkes.go.id; Migrant Career Centers with KP2MI at 38 Poltekkes: announcement
• Persatuan Perawat Nasional Indonesia (PPNI) — professional recommendation and membership: ppni-inna.org
• Ministry of Law, Directorate General of General Legal Administration — apostille service: portal.ahu.go.id
• KP2MI/BP2MI — placement, SIP2MI and cost rules: kp2mi.go.id; register of placement companies: SISKOP2MI
• UU No. 18 Tahun 2017 on the protection of Indonesian migrant workers: peraturan.bpk.go.id. UU No. 38 Tahun 2014 on nursing and UU No. 17 Tahun 2023 on health are in the same database at peraturan.bpk.go.id