Nursing - Certificate - Nursing Assistant
Nursing Assistants are in high demand by employers in Whatcom County!
Choose BTC’s Nursing Assistant program to train for nursing assistant jobs in a wide variety of medical settings. The knowledge and skills you’ll gain are highly valued by healthcare industry employers such as hospitals, assisted living facilities, nursing homes, and home health agencies.
Nursing Assistant training meets the Healthcare Experience requirement for entry into the BTC Registered Nursing Program. Students who complete the Nursing Assistant program will be eligible to take their WA State certification exams.
The Nursing Assistant Program at Bellingham Technical College is approved by the State of Washington, Department of Health, Nursing Care Quality Assurance Commission.
Note: BTC has not made a determination that the Nursing Assistant curriculum meets educational requirements for licensure/certification outside of Washington State. We encourage students who plan to work out-of-state to check relevant local licensure/certification requirements.
Employment Information
Data are provided on a program (not credential) level
85% BTC graduate placement rate1
$30,243 starting annual wage2
$34,216 average annual wage2
$38,958 potential annual wage2
- Employment and Wage Data Sources and Information
1Employment data come from the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) and reflect WA/OR employment for students enrolled at BTC between 2016-17 and 2018-19. Students are included in the employment rate if they left with a credential. Rates are not shown for programs with fewer than 10 students meeting the above criteria.
2Wage data come from Washington State Employment Security Department (ESD) 2020 Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates (Washington State wage) and reflect 2015-2018 employment. Wage data represent occupations that BTC faculty have identified as the most relevant career paths for program graduates. Note that these wages reflect employees with varying educational levels/credentials. For cases in which multiple occupations have been identified by faculty, a weighted percentile is calculated using each occupation’s percentile wage and employment size estimate. Wages are not shown for programs for which occupations do not meet the ESD’s minimum thresholds for publishing. If the program has wage data from the Washington SBCTC that involves shift work, these ESD wages reflect the same number of hours used in the annual wage calculation. Starting wage = 25th percentile, median wage = 50th percentile, wage potential = 75th percentile.
3Additional employment data are provided for programs with faculty who maintain their own employment records of students who graduated between 2016-17 and 2018-19. The rates reflect employment within 9 months of graduation within their field of study. This additional, faculty-provided rate is particularly important for programs that tend to have graduates employed outside of WA and OR, as the Washington State ESD does not provide data on those graduates. Note that due to lack of available data, rates may represent fewer than 3 years of graduates.
Estimated Program Costs