Connecticut has about 3.7 million residents. Registered nurses in the state average $105,250 a year, 11th among the fifty states and the District of Columbia.
Licensure
The Connecticut Board of Examiners for Nursing oversees registered nurse and licensed practical nurse licensure, with the licenses themselves issued by the state Department of Public Health. The board sits at 410 Capitol Avenue in Hartford, telephone (860) 509-7603. Rules and applications are on the Department of Public Health's nursing board page.
Connecticut is among the newest members of the Nurse Licensure Compact. The bill was signed in May 2024 and the compact went live in October 2025, a gap of nearly seventeen months during which a Connecticut license was still only a Connecticut license. A nurse living here can now hold one multistate license and work in every other compact state.
Rhode Island joined in 2024. New York and Massachusetts remain outside, which counts for a good deal in a state where many nurses work across a state line and where the two largest neighboring job markets are both in that position.
Nurse practitioner practice
Connecticut is a full practice state. Nurse practitioners evaluate patients, order and interpret tests, and prescribe under the nursing board's authority. A period of collaboration with a physician is required early in a nurse practitioner's career; after that, practice is independent. See nurse practitioner practice authority.
Nursing education
The Yale School of Nursing, which admits students without a nursing background into a graduate entry program as well as running conventional graduate tracks, is the state's best known program. The University of Connecticut School of Nursing at Storrs is the flagship public program, and Fairfield, Quinnipiac and Sacred Heart carry substantial private programs, with the community colleges supplying associate degree graduates.
Pay and workforce
The work concentrates around Hartford, New Haven and the corridor running through Bridgeport and Stamford. Yale New Haven Health and Hartford HealthCare are the two largest hospital employers. Sitting between the New York and Boston markets, both of which pay well and neither of which is in the compact, Connecticut hospitals compete for staff across three separate licensing regimes.
Connecticut has no critical access hospitals. It is one of five states with none, which is a function of geography: nowhere in the state is far enough from another hospital to qualify.
Nursing history
Of the three American nurse training schools founded in 1873 on Florence Nightingale's model, one was the Connecticut Training School for Nurses at New Haven. The other two were in New York and Boston. See history of nursing.
Related
- Nurse Licensure Compact
- Nurse practitioner practice authority
- History of nursing
- Registered nurse pay
- 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.
- Connecticut Board of Examiners for Nursing, contact details and licensing information. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Nurse Licensure Compact, member states and implementation dates. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Critical Access Hospital locations list. Flex Monitoring Team. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- American Association of Nurse Practitioners, State Practice Environment. Accessed September 8, 2026.