Washington has about 8.0 million residents. Registered nurses average $121,540 a year, fourth among the fifty states and the District of Columbia.
Licensure
Washington has no board of nursing in the usual sense. Registered nurses and advanced practice nurses are licensed by the Nursing Care Quality Assurance Commission, part of the Department of Health. Its office is on Israel Road SE in Tumwater, telephone (360) 236-4703. Rules and applications are at nursing.wa.gov. The commission does the work described under nurse practice acts and boards of nursing under a different name and a different governance structure.
Washington implemented the Nurse Licensure Compact in 2024, after years outside it. A nurse living in Washington can now hold one multistate license good in every other compact state, Idaho included. Oregon, immediately south, is not a member, which splits the Portland and Vancouver labor market across a licensing line.
Staffing law
Washington requires every hospital to run a staffing committee, half of its members frontline nursing staff, which writes and reviews an annual staffing plan. A 2023 law tightened the requirement, adding state enforcement, penalties for hospitals that do not follow their own plans, and rules guaranteeing uninterrupted meal and rest breaks.
Washington stopped short of the fixed numerical ratios California and Oregon set, which makes it the clearest example of the committee model that most states have adopted instead. See nurse staffing and patient outcomes.
Nurse practitioner practice
Washington has been a full practice state for decades. Nurse practitioners evaluate patients, order and interpret tests, prescribe and run independent practices under the nursing commission's authority. See nurse practitioner practice authority.
Nursing education
The University of Washington School of Nursing in Seattle is one of the leading nursing research faculties in the country. Washington State University's College of Nursing is based in Spokane and teaches across the east of the state, Seattle University and Gonzaga run substantial private programs, and the community and technical colleges supply associate degree graduates.
Pay and workforce
The Puget Sound region holds most of the state's nursing work, with UW Medicine, Providence Swedish, MultiCare Health System, Virginia Mason Franciscan Health and Seattle Children's the largest employers. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center adds a substantial research nursing workforce.
Eastern Washington is a separate market, centered on Spokane and the agricultural Yakima and Tri-Cities areas, with lower pay and recruitment difficulties of its own. The Olympic Peninsula and the northeast corner of the state are rural and served by critical access hospitals. See rural and frontier nursing.
Washington nurses are strongly unionized, and the state has seen repeated strike action over staffing rather than pay. See nurse strikes and bargaining.
Travel and flexible work
Washington is the exception among the heavy users of contract nursing: a large, well-paid, metropolitan state that behaves like a small rural one. Across NurseRecruiter's full archive of job listings, 2009 to 2026, it ranks eighth of the fifty states and the District of Columbia for travel assignments advertised per employed registered nurse, the highest position of any state with more than 50,000 nurses. Strong union contracts, hard staffing standards and a large eastern half with thin local supply all push in the same direction. See where the assignments are.
Of the Washington registered nurses with a profile on this site, 39 percent say they will consider travel assignments and 46 percent per diem shifts, both close to the national figures. Compact membership since 2024 removed the licensing step that used to stand in front of every traveller arriving here. See travel nursing and per diem nursing.
Related
- Nurse staffing and patient outcomes
- Nurse Licensure Compact
- Where the assignments are
- Nurse practice acts and boards of nursing
- Nurse practitioner practice authority
- 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.
- Washington State Nursing Care Quality Assurance Commission, contact details and licensing information. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Nurse Licensure Compact, member states and implementation dates. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- American Association of Nurse Practitioners, State Practice Environment. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Washington Senate Bill 5236 (2023), hospital staffing standards. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- NurseRecruiter job listings, 2009 to September 2026, and nurse profiles. Method and limits are set out in where the assignments are.