This paper analyses opportunities for epistemic engagement among hospital nurses, with special attention given to how roles and agencies are distributed in their work. Drawing on the perspectives of Knorr Cetina (1999, 2001), nursing is understood as a knowledge culture which collectively handles a range of epistemic practices related to selecting, validating, developing and applying knowledge. How these practices are distributed and how they interplay in nurses’ work-based learning is, however, not well understood. The analysis is based on interviews and observations conducted within the two Norwegian projects ProLearn and LiKE. Data was collected from multiple sites in an evolving manner, extending from hospital nurses’ work to other locations relevant for understanding this practice, i.e. the work of clinical nurse educators, the materials and artifacts utilized in work, as well as the visions of policy makers. Analytically, we distinguish between four contexts and their epistemic orientations: contexts of use, contexts of production, contexts of control and contexts of justification respectively, and describe and analyze the opportunities for learning involved in these. The results show how different contexts engender different responsibilities and agencies, which stimulate each other and which come together to form nurses’ knowledge culture and their opportunities for learning.