Stronger together: WSNA annual report
This story appears in the March 2026 edition of The Washington Nurse.
In 2025, the Washington State Nurses Association experienced a year of profound growth, change, turbulence, and opportunity.
We knew from the beginning of the year that we would be called upon to courageously speak up for our values, ethics, and principles—and we did. When federal actions threatened our patients, our colleagues, and our communities, we issued statements, communicated with elected officials, participated in rallies, and leveraged the media to get our message out. We worked in coalition with other state nurses associations and healthcare groups to stand up for nursing values and push back against actions that impact care delivery.
We wanted to be able to look back in 10, 20, and 30 years and say we met the moment and led with a strong conviction in our nursing values. We will be able to say that for 2025.
Throughout it all, WSNA has remained unwavering in its commitment to the issues that shape its profession and the patients it serves.
In 2025, we grew our membership to the highest levels in our history. We provided popular continuing nursing education, advocated with determination, and reached contract agreements that meaningfully addressed key issues like workplace violence, break relief for nurses, equity, and competitive wages.
Some of the big changes in 2025 open the door for us to reimagine the future of nursing and the broader healthcare landscape. With AI continuing to impact nearly every aspect of our lives, we are working to ensure that AI in healthcare serves to supplement—not replace—the hands-on nursing care our patients need. Much work remains ahead to fix a healthcare system that is failing to meet the needs of patients.
WSNA has always been, and will always remain, an organization led by its members.
While we know the coming year will bring substantial challenges, we are fully confident in our ability to meet them—because our strength lies in the collective power of our voices, our expertise, and our unwavering commitment to our patients and our profession.
— Justin Gill, DNP, APRN, RN, President
and David Keepnews, PhD, JD, RN, FAAN, Executive Director
WSNA membership reached an all-time high in 2025. We continue to focus on growing membership through organizing, recruitment, and retention to remain strong and grow as an organization.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
- More than 3,000 nurses joined WSNA in 2025.
- WSNA now represents nearly 22,000 nurses in Washington state for collective bargaining.
- Three new groups of nurses voted to join WSNA—case managers and utilization management nurses at Seattle Children’s (see sidebar), infusion and resident nurses at Confluence Health Mares Campus in Wenatchee, and case managers at the MultiCare Mary Bridge Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
WSNA continues to advocate for the critical issue of safe staffing, which is fundamental to nurses’ ability to provide excellent care to patients and protect their own well-being. In 2023, WSNA played an instrumental role in passing legislation that created greater hospital accountability for safe staffing.
Ensuring that nurses get their legally required breaks goes hand in hand with safe staffing. We continue to oppose the “break buddy” system, in which nurses cover for each other during breaks, essentially doubling their patient care assignments. This practice is dangerous for patients and puts hospitals out of compliance with the staffing law.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
Staffing law implementation
- Advocated for lawful and accurate interpretation and implementation of the safe staffing law through ongoing meetings with regulatory agencies, member education, and active participation on the Hospital Staffing Advisory Committee overseeing implementation of the 2023 safe staffing law
- Worked to hold hospitals accountable for following the new law by seeking guidance from regulatory agencies, submitting formal complaints, and working with hospital staffing committees
- Provided resources and education to local units throughout the implementation process, empowering staffing committees to track compliance, advocate confidently, and hold hospitals accountable
Meal and rest breaks
- Successfully advanced a law that provides more flexibility and greater control in break scheduling
Violence against nurses continues to increase across the country. WSNA advocates for stronger laws and contract language that take meaningful steps to prevent workplace violence and take care of nurses who are victims.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
- Successfully advocated for a new state law on workplace violence prevention that strengthens incident investigations and reporting and requires hospitals to develop and implement a new workplace violence prevention plan every year.
- Won stronger workplace violence protections in collective bargaining agreements, notably at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Bellingham and St. Clare in Lakewood.
One important way WSNA works to build nurse power is by increasing member involvement in political and legislative activities, growing WSNA’s political action committee (WSNA PAC), and preparing nurses to run for elected office.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
- The WSNA PAC now has 119 recurring donors from online contributions and 58 new recurring donors through payroll deductions.
- WSNA now has nine collective bargaining agreements that allow WSNA PAC contributions through payroll deductions.
- WSNA sent three members who expressed interest in running for public office to candidate trainings.
WSNA strongly advocates for public policy that improves nursing practice, betters working conditions, and advances access to safe, quality, and equitable care. Our Government Affairs team and member-driven Legislative and Health Policy Council set our state legislative agenda, and our members help advocate with legislators to support those priorities.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
- Two of WSNA’s five state legislative priorities passed —strengthening workplace violence prevention and allowing unemployment benefits for striking workers.
- More than 300 members responded to an Action Alert in support of HB 1162, the bill strengthening workplace violence protections.
- Six WSNA members testified in support of WSNA’s legislative priorities.
In 2025, we faced major policy shifts in Washington, D.C., which posed new threats to our members, our patients, and our communities. WSNA spoke out and took action against new policies that threatened healthcare and the labor movement.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
- On Sept. 2, 2025, WSNA and eight other plaintiffs settled a federal lawsuit against the purging of public health and science data from federal websites. The federal government agreed to restore the pages that had been removed.
- WSNA members joined protests across the state to raise awareness of issues relevant to nursing, healthcare, and patients.
- WSNA members spoke at press conferences with Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell to highlight the harms to patients of proposed cuts to Medicaid.
WSNA is committed to strengthening nurses’ collective power to win and enforce great contracts and to achieve better working conditions, nurse and patient safety, safe staffing, fair compensation, and more.
KEY HIGHLIGHTS
- Ratified 17 contracts.
- Won contract language that addresses key issues of workplace violence prevention, break relief nurses, and full credit for experience for internationally educated nurses.
- PeaceHealth St. Joseph Hospital in Bellingham reached an agreement after 14 bargaining sessions, two informational pickets, one protest song, and six weeks after the contract expired.
- The contract for nurses at St. Clare Hospital in Lakewood included break relief nurses, a weapons detection system in the Emergency Room, card-swipe entrances on all units, and a new language to ensure that internationally educated nurses receive equal pay for international experience.
Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion remains a core value for WSNA. At the Washington State Nurses Convention in April 2025, our membership strongly reaffirmed that commitment by passing a resolution guiding WSNA’s work on these issues in the coming biennium.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
- Members unanimously adopted a resolution at the convention in April: Reaffirming WSNA’s Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
- Members also adopted a main motion declaring WSNA’s “support for the rights and fair treatment of immigrants to the United States.”
- Also at the Convention in April, Monica McLemore, PhD, MPH, RN presented a two-part training on health equity that met Washington state’s licensure renewal requirement.
- WSNA joined a federal lawsuit against the purging of public health data that was part of federal government orders to remove information related to DEI and LGBTQ+ research, among other things. A settlement agreement resulted in the restoration of most of these sites.