The Washington Hearing Aid Specialist license, issued by the Department of Health under the Board of Hearing and Speech, under chapter 18.35 RCW and chapter 246-828 WAC, authorizes the holder to fit and dispense hearing aids in Washington. Its examination set is route-dependent by rule: the written International Licensing Exam for every applicant (WAC 246-828-020(1)), and the practical examination only for graduates of a board-approved nine-month certificate program (WAC 246-828-020(2)) — with no jurisprudence examination in the initial set since its removal effective December 31, 2025. The PassProfessor Washington Hearing Aid Specialist program, described on the companion program page at /washington-hearing-instrument-specialist-exam-prep/, prepares candidates for that examination set.
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The credential at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Program | Washington Hearing Aid Specialist, the DOH license for fitting and dispensing hearing aids in Washington |
| Licensing authority | Washington State Department of Health, Board of Hearing and Speech; chapter 18.35 RCW and chapter 246-828 WAC |
| Education gate | Proof of successfully completing a board-approved two-year degree or nine-month certificate program in hearing aid specialist instruction; official transcripts must show the degree or certificate and its date. DOH lists Spokane Falls Community College (AAS, Hearing Instrument Specialist) as the approved two-year program and the Washington Hearing Society (Hearing Aid Specialist Training) as the approved nine-month certificate |
| Written examination | Required of all applicants: the written International Licensing Exam developed by the International Hearing Society (WAC 246-828-020(1)), a computer-based test available at testing centers statewide; the passing score is the score recommended by the examination administrator and approved by the board. DOH reviews eligibility, notifies IHS, and IHS contacts the applicant with account, scheduling, and payment instructions and a study guide |
| Practical examination | Required only for applicants who completed a board-approved nine-month certificate program (WAC 246-828-020(2)); not required for two-year degree graduates. The practical is developed by IHS, administered by members of the Board of Hearing and Speech, given quarterly at the DOH offices in Tumwater; the application and fee must reach DOH at least 60 days before the examination date |
| Passing standards | No numeric standards are printed: for both examinations the rule states the standard in the form “a passing score as recommended by the examination administrator and as approved by the board” (WAC 246-828-020) |
| Other application requirements | Attestation of coverage by a surety bond, or verification of security in lieu of a bond, in the amount of at least $10,000; the name of a registered agent to accept service of process; license application and initial license fee of $175 (WAC 246-828-990 fee schedule, as published by DOH) |
| Jurisprudence note | The former jurisprudence examination is not a current initial-licensure requirement: WSR 25-09-055, effective December 31, 2025, removed it from initial licensure and placed it in continuing education (WAC 246-828-510) |
| Administrator note | PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with the Washington State Department of Health, the Board of Hearing and Speech, or the International Hearing Society |
Washington rewards candidates who read the credential as the Board built it: an education-first system in which two approved programs feed one license, a national written paper standing guard over both, a performed examination reserved for the shorter classroom route, and a calendar — 90 days, 60 days, quarterly dates, an annual birthday renewal — that disciplines the whole route. The guide below takes each verified element in turn.
Reading the verified facts
Every fact in the table above was pinned to Washington primary material — DOH’s licensing-requirements and licensing-information pages and the current text of WAC 246-828-020 — during this program’s research pass. Three reading rules apply throughout the guide. First, the practical’s scope is stated only in the rule’s scope: WAC 246-828-020(2) imposes it on applicants who completed a board-approved nine-month certificate program, and DOH’s page adds the express negative for degree graduates; no passage in this guide generalizes the practical to all applicants, and any third-party summary that does is misreading the rule. Second, the jurisprudence examination appears only as removed history: the amended WAC 246-828-020, filed as WSR 25-09-055 and effective December 31, 2025, contains subsections for the written and practical examinations and none for jurisprudence, which the same rulemaking placed in continuing education at WAC 246-828-510 — candidates should note that at least one DOH web page still carried a stale “jurisprudence exam required” form bullet in mid-2026, and the rule, not the stale bullet, governs. Third, passing standards are printed only in the rule’s published form — a passing score as recommended by the examination administrator and as approved by the board — because the rule publishes no number, and converting the administrator’s recommendation into a printed percentage would invent a fact.
The route, step by step
Step one — choose and complete the education route. Enroll in a board-approved program in hearing aid specialist instruction: the two-year degree (Spokane Falls Community College, AAS, Hearing Instrument Specialist) or the nine-month certificate (Washington Hearing Society, Hearing Aid Specialist Training). The certificate’s enrollment gate is itself academic: at least an associate or baccalaureate degree in any field, including a minimum of five credits each of 100-level-or-greater English composition, basic math, and humanities, verified by the school. Arrange for official transcripts to be sent directly to DOH, indicating the degree or certificate and the date granted. Step two — file the DOH application with the $175 license application and initial license fee, the name of a registered agent to accept service of process, the attestation of surety bond coverage or verification of security in lieu of a bond of at least $10,000, the list of all states where credentials are or were held (including applications that were not granted, with verifications sent directly by those jurisdictions), and the personal data questions. Fees are non-refundable, and a background check is processed for every applicant. Step three — sit the written examination. Credentialing staff review the application for examination eligibility and notify IHS; IHS contacts the applicant with instructions to create an online account, schedule, and pay, and sends a study guide; the computer-based examination is taken at a testing center statewide, credentialing staff notify the applicant of the score by email, and an applicant who does not pass is eligible to retake, with staff notifying IHS of retake eligibility. The window discipline: application to sit may be made no more than 90 days before the educational program’s verified anticipated completion date. Step four — certificate graduates only: sit the practical examination. Application and fee reach DOH at least 60 days before a quarterly Tumwater date; the program director’s roster confirms eligibility; the authorization letter arrives two weeks before the date with its time and location; failure is answered by retaking the next regularly scheduled examination. Step five — the license issues after final review confirms the application is complete and complies with chapters 18.35 RCW and 246-828 WAC.
The outline in full
Washington’s outline has two instruments and an education gate that decides who meets the second one. They are stated here in full, in the order a candidate meets them, because in Washington the three interlock: the program teaches what the written paper samples, the written paper certifies the knowledge both routes share, and the practical audits the shorter route’s skills in person, before Board members, because that route’s classroom was shorter.
The education gate: the route’s first examination, taken over months
Washington is an education-gated state, and the gate deserves treatment as part of the examination set rather than as background. Both approved routes are programs in hearing aid specialist instruction approved by the Board of Hearing and Speech; both end in a transcripted credential DOH verifies directly with the school; and they differ in the dimension the rest of the system cares about — supervised classroom and laboratory formation, two years of it against nine months. The certificate route’s academic enrollment prerequisite (a prior degree with composition, math, and humanities credits) shows the design clearly: the nine-month program is a conversion course for graduates, not a first education, and the Board’s additional verification for its graduates — the practical examination — completes the logic. Candidates should choose the route with the whole system in view: total time, total examinations, and the quarterly practical calendar that only one route must meet.
The written examination: one paper over both routes
The written International Licensing Exam, developed by the International Hearing Society, is the system’s universal instrument. WAC 246-828-020(1) imposes it on “a hearing aid specialist credential applicant” without route distinction, permits another board-approved entity’s examination in the alternative, and fixes the standard as the administrator-recommended, board-approved passing score. DOH’s account of the sitting is procedural and complete: eligibility confirmed by credentialing staff, notification to IHS, the applicant’s own account creation, scheduling, and payment with IHS, a study guide sent by IHS, computer-based delivery at centers statewide, the score returned by email, and a retake path that runs back through DOH’s notification to IHS. The paper’s territory is the shared professional knowledge of dispensing — acoustics and hearing science, audiometric evaluation, instrument technology and selection, fitting and verification, counseling — and its universality is its meaning: whatever a candidate’s program taught or omitted, the state samples the same knowledge at the same standard before either route’s graduate is licensed. Preparation should therefore be calibrated to the paper, not to the program: a degree candidate whose coursework felt comprehensive and a certificate candidate whose felt compressed face the identical instrument.
The practical examination: performed skill, certificate route only
The Hearing Aid Specialist Practical Examination is a clinical examination developed by IHS and administered by members of the Board of Hearing and Speech at the Department’s offices in Tumwater, given quarterly. Its defining fact is its population: WAC 246-828-020(2) requires it of the applicant “who has completed a board-approved nine-month certificate program,” and DOH’s requirements page states the complement — it is not a requirement for applicants who completed a board-approved two-year degree program. Everything about its administration follows from its seriousness as the shorter route’s verification: a hard application deadline 60 days before each date; eligibility rosters sent by the program director; an authorization letter two weeks out fixing the time and place; the published $350 examination fee for Washington Hearing Society applicants; and a retake rule that points to the next regularly scheduled examination — quarterly, so a failure is a season’s delay, which is precisely why rehearsal belongs inside the certificate’s nine months rather than after them. What is examined is dispensing performed: the testing and fitting craft carried out in front of the Board’s own members, the audience least likely to be persuaded by anything but the work itself.
The removed examination: jurisprudence, as history only
A complete Washington guide must account for the examination that is no longer there, because older material — including, in mid-2026, a stale bullet on a DOH licensing-information page listing a jurisprudence form as required for the initial license — still presents it as current. The governing record is the rule: WAC 246-828-020 as amended by WSR 25-09-055, effective December 31, 2025, requires the written examination (subsection (1)) and, for certificate graduates, the practical (subsection (2)), and contains no jurisprudence requirement for initial licensure; the same rulemaking placed the jurisprudence examination in continuing education at WAC 246-828-510. The accurate summary is therefore double: no jurisprudence examination gates a new Washington license today, and Washington licensees will meet jurisprudence content in their continuing education. A candidate asked to pay for entry-level Washington jurisprudence preparation in 2026 is being sold a removed requirement; a licensee who ignores jurisprudence in continuing education is making the opposite error. This guide confines the subject to this section, as history and as a continuing-education note, and builds no part of its study plan on it.
How Washington publishes its passing standards — and what is not published
Washington’s rule publishes a standard-setting arrangement rather than a number, and the distinction is worth a slow pass. For each examination, WAC 246-828-020 requires the applicant to “obtain a passing score as recommended by the examination administrator and as approved by the board.” The arrangement has three working parts: the administrator — for the written paper, IHS — recommends the score from its own standard-setting for the instrument; the Board approves it, keeping the state’s authority over its own license explicit; and the candidate’s obligation is to reach the score in force for their sitting, which the administrator’s candidate materials communicate. What neither the rule nor the DOH pages verified publish is a fixed numeric or percentage standard, and this guide prints none. Any precise Washington pass percentage circulating in commercial material should be treated as unverified unless IHS’s current candidate documentation states it. The preparation consequence is the same as in every administrator-standard system: the honest target is the syllabus at working mastery across its whole breadth, because no published margin exists to aim just above.
The sittings themselves
The two sittings differ in every mechanical respect, and the candidate should rehearse each as its own event. The written examination is the flexible one: once DOH has confirmed eligibility to IHS and IHS has made contact, the candidate creates an account, schedules, and pays with IHS, and sits a computer-based test at a testing center statewide, inside the discipline of the 90-day rule — no application to sit more than 90 days before the program’s verified anticipated completion date — with the score arriving afterward by email from credentialing staff. The practical examination is the fixed one: four dates a year in Tumwater, an application and fee lodged 60 days ahead, the program director’s roster, the authorization letter a fortnight out, and Board members administering the clinical examination in the Department’s own offices. Its logistics reward the organized: a candidate who files at the deadline’s edge has no slack for a transcript or verification delay, and the next chance is a quarter away. Across both sittings runs DOH’s standing administrative advice: watch for email from the Department throughout the process and answer promptly, because delayed responses lengthen the credential’s timeline — advice that sounds clerical and is, in a quarterly system, worth months.
A study plan built on how this examination set is actually put together
Build the plan on the route, then on the calendar. First, the written syllabus, for everyone — the ILE’s professional knowledge studied against the candidate’s program from early in the program rather than after it, since the 90-day window lets a well-prepared candidate sit close to completion and the paper samples the whole occupation, not the final term. Second, for certificate candidates, performed rehearsal across all nine months — audiometric runs, impression work, and counseling conducted live and corrected, built steadily toward a Board-administered quarterly sitting; the practical’s population is small and its examiners are the Board itself, and the preparation that respects that fact is repetition under observation. Third, the calendar worked backwards — program completion date verified, written sitting placed inside its window, the practical’s 60-day application deadline diarised from the quarter’s date, transcripts requested with slack, DOH emails answered the day they arrive. Fourth, degree candidates’ discipline — resist the complacency the single-examination route invites: the written paper is the same instrument the certificate route faces after nine intensive months, and two years of coursework prepares for it only if the candidate converts coursework into examination practice before sitting. Fifth, no hours to the removed requirement — jurisprudence belongs to the licensee’s continuing education, and entry-level study time spent on it is taken directly from the two examinations that actually gate the license.
The working method: turning the outline into a performance
Washington preparation fails most often as a route-and-calendar problem disguised as a knowledge problem. The working method that answers it has four parts. Fix the route on paper first. One page stating the candidate’s program, its verified completion date, which examinations the route requires, and every deadline derived from those facts — the 90-day window, the 60-day lead, the quarterly date — reviewed whenever any fact changes. Timed, mixed written practice at the ILE’s register, with an error log keyed to the paper’s subjects, so the log and not the program’s grades assign the remaining study. Performed drills with a witness for the certificate route: full procedures run in front of the program’s instructors or peers, deviations named on the spot, because the practical’s examiners will do exactly that. An administrative dry run before each deadline — transcripts confirmed sent, bond attestation and agent details ready, application complete, fees payable — walked cold a month before the real dates, in a system where a paperwork slip costs a quarter rather than a week.
The errors this examination set is built to catch
The Washington set catches a recognisable set. Assuming the practical binds everyone — the mirror-image error of assuming it binds no one — wastes a degree graduate’s final term rehearsing a sitting their route does not include, or sends a certificate candidate to Tumwater unrehearsed because a summary told them the degree rule applied to all. Preparing for the jurisprudence examination at entry buys a removed requirement: WSR 25-09-055 took it out of initial licensure effective December 31, 2025, and stale web pages — including, for a time, one of DOH’s own — do not restore it. Missing the 60-day practical deadline is the costliest clerical error in the system: the retake and the missed date both resolve to the next quarterly sitting, a season later. Letting the 90-day window drift — applying to sit the written paper before the window opens, or letting the program’s completion verification lag — stalls the one flexible sitting in the set. Reading the program’s internal grades as examination readiness meets a national paper set to an administrator’s recommended, board-approved standard, indifferent to any school’s curve. And treating the bond, agent, and transcript requirements as afterthoughts: the final review approves complete applications, and the candidate whose examinations are passed but whose file is incomplete is, to the system, not yet a candidate for the license at all.
The credential in one view
The Washington Hearing Aid Specialist license in one view is an education system with examinations at its joints. The Board approves two formations — a two-year degree and a nine-month certificate for graduates — and trusts them differently in exact proportion to their length: the degree graduate is verified by the national written paper alone, while the certificate graduate’s formation is closed out in person, performing the craft before the Board’s own members in Tumwater. Over both stands the same written gate at the same administrator-recommended, board-approved standard, so the license means one thing regardless of the road taken to it. Around the examinations, the state’s continuing conditions — the $10,000 bond, the calibrated equipment, the annual birthday renewal, the continuing education into which the jurisprudence examination has moved — keep the credential a working one. The candidate who studies Washington as that single system finds the parts explaining each other: the certificate’s practical explains its enrollment prerequisite, the 60-day deadline explains the quarterly calendar’s discipline, and the removed jurisprudence examination explains why the only Washington sources worth trusting are the current rule and the Department’s current pages.
After the sittings: the annual credential
Passing closes the examination story and opens the annual one. The Hearing Aid Specialist renews every year on or before their birthday, paying the $45 renewal fee on the published schedule and attesting to the surety bond or security in lieu of a bond under RCW 18.35.240 and to the proper calibration of the establishment’s testing equipment, with continuing education completed on the schedule DOH’s hearing and speech services publish and random audits behind both attestations. Employment changes are reported on DOH’s Employment Update form, and contact information is kept current so renewal notices reach the licensee. Inside continuing education the specialist will meet the jurisprudence material the 2025 rulemaking moved there — Washington law studied as a practitioner’s ongoing formation rather than an entrant’s toll. The specialist who built the route’s calendar discipline — deadlines diarised a quarter ahead, documents filed before they were chased — finds the annual cycle undemanding; Washington’s system rewards, at every stage, the practitioner who treats its paperwork as part of the profession rather than as an interruption of it.
Frequently asked questions
Which sources govern the Washington route?
DOH’s Hearing Aid Specialist licensing-requirements and licensing-information pages for the application, education, and fee facts, and WAC 246-828-020 for the examinations themselves — read in its current form, as amended by WSR 25-09-055 effective December 31, 2025.
Why does the certificate route carry a practical examination when the degree route does not?
The rule’s structure is proportional verification: the nine-month certificate is the shorter formation, and WAC 246-828-020(2) closes it with a performed, Board-administered examination; the two-year degree’s longer supervised formation is verified by the written paper alone. Whatever the rationale, the operative fact is the rule’s text — practical for certificate completers, not for degree graduates.
I read on a DOH page that a jurisprudence exam is required for the initial license. Which is right?
The rule is right. A form bullet to that effect survived on a DOH licensing-information page into 2026, but WAC 246-828-020 as amended by WSR 25-09-055 (effective December 31, 2025) contains no jurisprudence requirement for initial licensure, and the jurisprudence examination was placed in continuing education at WAC 246-828-510. When a web summary and the current Administrative Code differ, the Code governs.
How are the written examination’s retakes handled?
DOH’s page states the loop plainly: an applicant who does not pass is eligible to retake the examination, and credentialing staff will notify IHS of the retake eligibility — after which the IHS scheduling process runs again.
What happens if I miss a practical examination deadline?
The system offers no late door: the application and fee are due at least 60 days before the date, and the examination is given quarterly, so the next opportunity is the next regularly scheduled examination. The same quarterly cadence governs retakes after an unsuccessful sitting.
Can I sit the written examination before finishing my program?
Yes, within the rule’s limit: an applicant may apply to take the written examination no more than 90 days before the anticipated completion date of the educational program, and that date must be verified by the educational program (WAC 246-828-020(1)).
Does this program satisfy Washington’s education gate?
No. The education gate is completion of a board-approved two-year degree or nine-month certificate program, and PassProfessor’s program is examination preparation, not a board-approved education program. Spokane Falls Community College and the Washington Hearing Society are the approved providers DOH lists.
What are the current published fees in the route?
On DOH’s fee schedule under WAC 246-828-990: license application and initial license $175, renewal $45, and the hearing aid specialist practical examination for Washington Hearing Society applicants $350. The written examination’s fee is paid to IHS on scheduling; DOH’s pages do not state its amount, and none is printed here.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with DOH, the Board, or IHS?
No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider. DOH alone licenses; IHS develops the written examination and the practical examination the Board administers.
When does enrollment open for the PassProfessor program?
The program is in the works and enrollment is not yet open. Leave an email address on this page and PassProfessor will write to you when the program is ready — and only about this program.