Massachusetts has about 7.2 million residents. Registered nurses average $117,960 a year, fifth among the fifty states and the District of Columbia.
Licensure
The Massachusetts Board of Registration in Nursing licenses registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and advanced practice registered nurses through the Department of Public Health. Its office is on Washington Street in Boston, telephone (617) 973-0900. Rules and applications are on the board's page at mass.gov.
Massachusetts has passed Nurse Licensure Compact legislation without implementing it, so the state neither issues nor recognizes multistate licenses. A nurse holding one still has to obtain a Massachusetts license by endorsement. The distinction between enacting and implementing the compact matters more here than almost anywhere, because it is easy to read the state as a member and be wrong.
Of the states on its borders, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Vermont are all live compact members. New York is not.
Staffing law
Massachusetts sets nurse to patient ratios in intensive care and burn units by statute. The 2014 law limits a nurse in those units to one or two patients, and which of the two applies is decided by an acuity tool applied to each patient's condition rather than fixed in the statute. It was phased in from 2016. See patient acuity and staffing systems.
That is the only staffing ratio law in the state. A 2018 ballot question that would have extended mandated ratios to every hospital unit was rejected by voters after the most expensive ballot campaign in the state's history, with the nurses' union on one side and the hospital association on the other. Massachusetts is one of four states with any mandated ratios; the research behind the argument is under nurse staffing and patient outcomes, and the campaign itself under nurse strikes and bargaining.
Nurse practitioner practice
Massachusetts is a full practice state. A 2021 law ended the requirement for a permanent supervisory relationship. Once a nurse practitioner completes a set period of supervised practice, evaluation, ordering and interpreting tests, and prescribing all fall under the nursing board's authority. See nurse practitioner practice authority.
Nursing history
Modern American nursing training began in Massachusetts. Linda Richards enrolled in 1872 as the first pupil of the first American nurses' training school, at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston, and graduated in 1873 as the country's first professionally trained nurse. She came back in 1874 to run the Boston Training School for Nurses, attached to Massachusetts General Hospital, one of three American schools founded in 1873 on Florence Nightingale's model.
Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was born in North Oxford in 1821. See history of nursing.
Nursing education
Boston College's Connell School of Nursing, Northeastern University's Bouvé College, the University of Massachusetts nursing colleges at Amherst and Boston, and Simmons University carry the largest programs. The MGH Institute of Health Professions, founded by Massachusetts General Hospital, is an unusual case: a degree granting graduate school created by a hospital, and a direct descendant of the training school Linda Richards ran.
Pay and workforce
The Boston teaching hospitals, Massachusetts General, Brigham and Women's, Boston Children's, Beth Israel Deaconess, Tufts Medical Center and Boston Medical Center, make the city one of the largest concentrations of academic nursing work in the country. Several of them hold Magnet recognition, which shapes who they hire and at what level of education. Worcester, Springfield and the Merrimack Valley form secondary markets, and Cape Cod fills up every summer.
Pay is high. So is the cost of living anywhere near the Boston hospitals, and the state's nurses are among the most heavily unionized in the country. See registered nurse pay.
Related
- Nurse staffing and patient outcomes
- Patient acuity and staffing systems
- Licensure by endorsement
- Linda Richards
- 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.
- Massachusetts Board of Registration in Nursing, contact details and licensing information. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Nurse Licensure Compact, member states and implementation status. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- American Association of Nurse Practitioners, State Practice Environment. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Massachusetts General Laws chapter 111, section 231, intensive care unit nurse staffing (2014), phased in from 2016. Accessed September 8, 2026.