Nursing Resume: Examples and Skills for a Nurse Resume
Make your nursing resume as strong as your bedside manner! Our guide offers nurse resume examples, top nursing skills, and expert tips to help you get your dream job in healthcare.
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Nursing Resume Example with Clinical Experience
Build my resumeJob Responsibilities for a Nurse Resume
Nurses provide patient care, from administering medications to monitoring vital signs and supporting recovery. They deliver compassionate, effective care in collaboration with other healthcare professionals. Essential nursing resume skills include empathy, critical thinking, and communication.
The exact duties of a nurse depend on the position and specialization. A PACU nurse resume, for example, will feature different tasks than an emergency room nurse resume. However, there’s a set of core responsibilities that all nursing professionals share:
- Administer medications and monitor their effects.
- Monitor vital signs and record patients’ conditions.
- Assess patients’ health status and report any changes.
- Educate patients and their families about health conditions and treatments.
- Assist physicians during examinations and medical procedures.
- Collaborate with healthcare professionals to create individualized care plans.
- Document patient care, treatments, and progress in medical records accurately.
- Act as a liaison between patients and the healthcare team, ensuring needs are met.
To see these and other duties framed as achievements on a job application, take a look at these nursing resume templates written by career experts:
Nursing Assistant Resume
Nurse Practitioner Sample Resume
Medical-Surgical Nurse Resume Example
1. Use the Correct Format for Your Nurse Resume
Formatting your nursing resume correctly is essential to making a positive first impression on potential employers. A well-structured resume enhances readability and highlights your qualifications and experience, giving you the best chance of landing an interview.
So, let’s get to work—the first step is choosing the proper format for your resume. There are three options to consider, and the most common choice is the reverse-chronological resume format. This is the classic format you’re probably already familiar with, focusing on your work experience and accomplishments from previous jobs. It’s the perfect fit for almost all candidates.
The functional resume format is another option—it highlights your skills, taking the spotlight off your work experience. It’s a viable choice for career-change resumes and can conceal any gaps in your work experience. At the same time, though, it undersells your accomplishments, and recruiters aren’t always familiar with it, so it has drawbacks. Finally, there’s the combination resume—a hybrid of the other two formats.
We’ll focus on the reverse-chronological format since it’s the most universal and safest choice. You’ll need to include the following resume sections:
- Resume header
- Summary paragraph (introduction)
- Work experience
- Education
- Skills
- Additional sections, like certifications and foreign language skills
In the following parts of this guide, we’ll go through the process of creating each section. For now, make a structure for your resume and apply the following formatting tips:
- Choose a simple resume font, like Arial or Calibri. Set it to 10–12 points for readability.
- Give each section a larger heading (14–16 points).
- Use 1.15 line spacing and one-inch margins on your resume to give your text some breathing room.
- Try to fit everything on one page, as that’s the best resume length in most cases. Two-page resumes are okay for nurses with extensive experience and plenty of professional achievements.
Submit your resume as a PDF file unless the employer asks for a different format. PDFs will keep your formatting intact and look the same on every device and in print.
2. Open Your Nursing Resume with a Header
Add a header along the top of the page, then add the following contact information to your resume:
- Your full name
- Your phone number
- Your email address
You can also add a link to your LinkedIn profile, although that’s only a good idea if your profile is up-to-date and active on the platform.
Include your professional title, RN, after your name to highlight your qualifications. You can also put your license number in the header of your resume or next to your certification details.
Pro tip: Including your license number on your resume is often recommended but not mandatory—it’s okay if you’d rather keep this information to yourself until later in the hiring process.
3. Build a Strong Work Experience Section
In the work experience section of your resume, list your current and previous jobs, including the job title, the name and location of the employer, and your dates of employment. Start with your most recent job, followed by the previous one, and so on.
Next, write 3–5 bullet points for each job to tell the employer about your accomplishments in each role. This is the key to your resume’s success: focus on achievements rather than simply listing duties. Recruitment professionals know what the role of a nurse involves—what you need to tell them is how you made the most of your time in each job.
Here are a few tips to make your nursing resume bullet points powerful and effective:
- Start each bullet point with an action word, such as “delivered” or “improved,” to show the impact of your contributions.
- Use numbers wherever possible to add context to your accomplishments. For example, ”improved patient satisfaction scores by 15%” sounds more professional and impactful than a bland statement like “made sure patients were happy with the level of care.”
- Customize your nurse job descriptions for each job opening. Different roles may require slightly different strengths, so reframe your accomplishments and skills if necessary to show you’re the ideal candidate for the job at hand.
To see a show-stopping nurse job description for a resume, look at the sample nursing resumes included in this guide!
If you don’t have much work experience, fill this section with relevant information about your internship experience and volunteering, and consider placing it after your education section. When writing a resume with no work experience, focus on showing your potential and transferable skills.
4. Highlight Key Details About Your Education
For nursing roles, education is just as important as work experience. Outline yours in a separate resume education section, including your degree(s). Only list your high school diploma if you’re writing an entry-level nurse resume and you’re still studying towards your degree.
Include the name and level of your degree or diploma, the name of the educational institution, and your dates of attendance. This information will be sufficient if you’re writing an experienced nurse resume—your work history will be much more relevant than what you did in college.
However, on a resume for a nursing student or another entry-level position, consider adding more impact to your education section to compensate for your relative lack of work experience. Include bullet points with:
- Your academic achievements
- Relevant coursework
- Extracurricular activities that show your skills and personality
- Projects and volunteering completed as part of your studies, such as peer tutoring
The idea is to use these to prove your potential, so frame them as achievements and valuable experiences. Highlight what nursing student skills you developed or perfected, even if they were non-clinical skills like communication or leadership.
Build my resume5. Pick the Right Skills for Nursing Resumes
The nursing skills resume section is your chance to list your most relevant abilities. Aim for around ten skills that make you the perfect fit for the job. To help you decide, review the job ad and look for specific skills the employer expects in ideal candidates. These are the skills to put on your nursing resume!
Include a balanced mix of clinical skills (hard skills), software proficiencies, and soft skills like communication and teamwork.
Here are example of nursing skills to put on a resume to help you get started:
Nursing Skills for Resumes
- Patient assessment
- Wound care
- Medication administration
- IV therapy
- EHR Management (Epic, Cerner)
- Catheterization
- Vital signs monitoring
- Patient Education
- Teamwork
- Time management
- Critical thinking
- Communication skills
- Basic Life Support (BLS)
- Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS)
- Pain management
Pro tip: Skills from the job advertisement work as resume keywords and help your application pass ATS checks. ATS is software that large hospitals use for scanning incoming resumes.
6. Inject Personality Into Your Resume with Supplementary Sections
Your nursing resume wouldn’t be complete without additional sections providing a more comprehensive career overview.
You’ll want to include a section for your licenses and certifications as a nurse. You can add your continuing education to this section, too, especially if it’s relevant to the job for which you’re applying.
Alongside certifications on your resume, you may also want to include:
- Volunteering resume section
- Foreign language skills
- Awards
- Memberships in professional associations
- Interests
Stick to relevant information—only things that directly show you’re the ideal candidate for the job deserve a spot on your nursing resume.
7. Write a Compelling Nursing Resume Objective or Summary
Now that your nurse resume is almost complete, the time has come to work on its introduction. Here’s how to write a summary for a nurse resume:
- Find the top achievements in your experience so far and condense them into one short paragraph.
- Add a few key skills, ideally those mentioned in the job advertisement.
- Include an offer to apply your expertise towards helping the new employer achieve a specific goal.
- Mention the prospective employer by name—it shows that you care.
Here is a nursing resume summary example:
Dedicated registered nurse with over 5 years of experience providing high-quality patient care in medical-surgical and critical care units. Improved patient satisfaction scores by 25% and reduced hospital readmission rates by 15% through effective communication and personalized care. Proficient in electronic health record (EHR) systems, skilled in IV therapy and wound care. Eager to join the Greenwood Community Hospital nursing team to contribute to patient satisfaction and outcomes positively.
Writing an introduction like this can seem impossible if you’re just starting and don’t have work experience. But don’t worry—you can write a nursing objective for your resume that’ll be just as impressive.
An objective follows the same structure as a summary but draws on volunteering, internships, and other experiences instead of workplace accomplishments. When writing an objective for a nursing resume, you can also mention your academic achievements to show your theoretical knowledge is top-notch.
Here’s an example student nurse resume objective:
Highly motivated student nurse with hands-on experience from clinical placements and internships in medical-surgical and pediatric units. Assisted in providing direct care to over 50 patients weekly, contributing to a 10% improvement in patient satisfaction during clinical rotations. Achieved top 5% in my nursing program, focusing on patient-centered care and evidence-based practices. Proficient in vital signs monitoring, IV administration, and EHR documentation. Eager to join Greenwood Community Hospital to apply my skills and help improve patient outcomes and overall care quality.
Don’t worry too much if you’re writing a new grad nurse resume and have no experience to rely on. After all, if the employer is looking for a recent graduate, they’re prepared to take on someone with minimal work experience!
Nurse Resume Dos and Don’ts
- Showcase your most relevant clinical experience. Put your most relevant nursing roles in the spotlight! Highlight specialties, patient care areas, and expertise that align perfectly with your target job.
- Quantify your achievements. To make your resume stand out, don’t just list duties—show impact. Use numbers to prove your value, like improving patient outcomes by 20% or reducing ER wait times by 15 minutes.
- Use professional formatting. Your resume should look neat and tidy, with easy-to-read fonts, bullet points, and consistent formatting that lets your qualifications shine.
- Use vague statements and general descriptions like “helped with patient care.” Be specific—describe how you took charge of patient treatment plans or administered critical care.
- Clutter your resume with too much information. In this case, less is more. Stick to the most relevant experience and aim for a clear, concise resume that’s easy to skim.
- Send the same resume to every job you apply for. Instead, tailor your resume to ensure it reflects the skills and expertise required by each employer.
Looking for other resume examples and guides for roles in the healthcare industry? These may interest you:
Sources
- The Top 8 Nonclinical Skills Needed to Be an Excellent Nurse, Maryville University, accessed October 2, 2024, https://nursing.maryville.edu/blog/skills-needed-to-be-a-nurse.html
- 8 Things Employers Love to See on a Nursing Resume, Brianna Flavin, Rasmussen University, accessed October 2, 2024, https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/nursing/blog/nursing-resume-advice/
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