North Dakota has about 799,000 residents. Registered nurses average $83,600 a year, 45th among the fifty states and the District of Columbia.
Licensure
The North Dakota Board of Nursing licenses registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and advanced practice registered nurses. Its office is on South 7th Street in Bismarck, telephone (701) 751-3000. Rules and applications are at ndbon.org.
North Dakota implemented the Nurse Licensure Compact in 2004. An eligible RN or LPN/VN whose primary state of residence is North Dakota may obtain a multistate license. That license permits practice in other jurisdictions where the compact privilege is in effect, Montana and South Dakota included. Minnesota, immediately east and the market for nurses in Fargo and Grand Forks, is not a member, which splits both of those cities across a licensing line.
Nursing history
From 1987 until 2003, North Dakota was the only state in the country that required a bachelor's degree in nursing for registered nurse licensure, and an associate degree for practical nurse licensure.
No other state followed. Neighboring states kept admitting associate degree graduates to the same license, North Dakota's own rural hospitals struggled to recruit against them, and the legislature repealed the requirement in 2003 after sixteen years. It remains the only real world test of mandating the degree, and it is why the idea has not been seriously attempted since. See entry into practice and the BSN requirement.
Nurse practitioner practice
North Dakota is a full practice state. Nurse practitioners evaluate patients, order and interpret tests, and prescribe under the nursing board's authority. See nurse practitioner practice authority.
Nursing education
The University of North Dakota College of Nursing in Grand Forks and North Dakota State University in Fargo run the state's public programs, with the University of Mary in Bismarck carrying a private one. Tribal and community colleges supply associate degree and practical nurse graduates, and in several communities they are the only local route into nursing. See Indian Health Service and tribal nursing.
Pay and workforce
Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks and Minot hold the larger hospitals, with Sanford Health and Essentia Health the biggest employers. The oil counties in the west saw rapid population growth and severe housing pressure during the Bakken boom, which made staffing rural hospitals there unusually expensive, since a nurse could not find anywhere to live at a nurse's wage.
The rest of the state is thinly settled farmland served by critical access hospitals, where winter weather regularly complicates a transfer to a tertiary center. See rural and frontier nursing.
Related
- Entry into practice and the BSN requirement
- Nurse Licensure Compact
- Critical access hospitals
- Rural and frontier nursing
- Nursing by state
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau, state population estimates for July 1, 2025. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, registered nurses (29-1141), May 2025. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- North Dakota Board of Nursing, contact details and licensing information. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Nurse Licensure Compact, member states. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- American Association of Nurse Practitioners, State Practice Environment. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Nurse Licensure Compact: eligibility and multistate privileges (accessed 2026-11-11).
- O*NET OnLine, registered nurse wage percentiles for North Dakota, BLS May 2025 data (accessed 2026-11-11).