Board of Nursing Data

Washinton’s Board of Nursing currently posts Interactive Data Dashboards for the public to access, to capture education, licensing, and workforce data: Data Dashboards | WA Board of Nursing  This may be helpful when looking to evaluate competition in the workforce but also in considering licensing issues where there may be disparity throughout the state.  Note that the geographic areas for licensing likely relate to the residential address of the licensee, not where they may work.

What is particularly noticeable is that the majority of the 8,774 active ARNP licensures are mostly concentrated in King, Pierce, Spokane, and Snohomish counties respectively.  The majority of the 9,066 active LPN licensures are primarily concentrated in Pierce, King, Snohomish, Clark, and Thurston counties respectively. 

Meanwhile, the 79,310 RN active licensures permeate the majority of the rest of the State, with concentrations throughout the entire Cascade corridor, in the Tri-Cities, Central Washington, Spokane, and parts of the Olympic Peninsula.  There are pockets with gaps, certainly, which suggest extremely underserved communities or areas with a small population.

The BON updates the data monthly—hopefully it will put forward a Discipline Data Dashboard soon, as the Department of Health routinely tracks this information but only reports every two (2) years: 2019-2021 Uniform Disciplinary Act (UDA) Report (wa.gov)