CEU requirements
in plain English
📚 Know exactly which CEUs you need
🕝 Understand the renewal cycle
✅ Stay audit-ready
LSWAA Continuing Education (CEU) Requirements in Washington
After you become licensed, your LSWAA renews annually on your date of birth. CE hours are tracked on a annual cycle: 16 hours of continuing education every year. Specific topic minimums apply on top of the total — see below.
Topic minimums each cycle
- Total CE: 16 hours per annual cycle.
- Professional ethics and law: 6 hours every 2 years.
- Professional roles and boundaries: 2 hours every 2 years — must be taken separately from the ethics & law hours (WAC 246-809-630(3)(b)).
Suicide assessment, treatment, and management
Two requirements (WAC 246-809-632(5)):
- Initial: 6 hours after initial licensure and before your first renewal.
- Subsequent: 6 hours within each following 6-year period (per WAC 246-809-615 and 246-809-630).
Selected from the DOH's model list (WAC 246-809-615).
Health equity
2 hours every 4 years (WAC 246-809-632(4) / 246-12-830). Counts toward your 16-hour total when taken during a reporting period.
Acceptable CE
Per WAC 246-809-610, eligible CE must be relevant to the profession and contribute to professional competence. Specifically:
- Programs with a featured instructor, speaker, or panel approved by an industry-recognized local, state, national, or international organization (or institution of higher learning).
- Distance learning from the same kind of organization. Asynchronous courses must include a test of comprehension on completion. No cap.
- Employer-sponsored training — capped at 26 hours per reporting period.
- Other learning experience — capped at 6 hours per reporting period: serving on a panel, board, or council; community service; research; peer consultation; publishing articles in professional publications.
Excluded: courses primarily designed to increase practice income or office efficiency.
How to stay audit-ready
- Keep transcripts, instructor letters, or certificates of completion for every CE course.
- Spread your hours across the annual cycle — easier to track and cheaper than scrambling near renewal.
- Complete the initial 6h suicide assessment in your first year — required before your first renewal — and track the next 6-year mark for the subsequent 6h.
When does my license expire?
Your LSWAA expires annually on your date of birth. Submit your renewal — including the attestation that your CE hours are complete — before that date or the license lapses.