Registered Nurse Resume Examples, Skills, and Keywords
Nursing is a field that takes dedication, patience, and a lot of medical knowledge. Writing an excellent registered nurse resume can help you demonstrate your skills to potential employers. This is what you should know to write a resume that gets your application seen.
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Registered Nurse Resume Sample
Registered nurses are critical to modern medical infrastructure. They’re responsible for the majority of patient care in clinics and hospitals alike. When a medical institution is looking for new nurses, they want to be confident that they’re hiring someone who’s responsible, friendly, and skilled.
Your resume is your best tool to convince employers that you’re worth interviewing. You need to list your technical knowledge and certifications so they know you’re fully qualified for the position. You should also mention soft skills like your interpersonal skills and ability to handle emergencies. Most importantly, you need to do this on one page, because few employers will read a two-page resume.
This registered nurse resume example demonstrates how you can explain your education, certifications, technical knowledge, and soft skills all within a single-page document.
Los Angeles, CA 90013 • (555) 555-1234 • khahn@email.com • linkedin.com/in/kathryn-hahn
REGISTERED NURSE (R.N.)
Versatile and adaptable professional with 19+ years’ clinical nursing experience across a variety of functions in fast-paced medical settings. Proven history of effectively implementing nursing procedures and training to promote safe, patient-centered care. Serves as a leader and role model in advancing clinical practices to achieve optimal patient outcomes. Excellent communicator who calms patients and collaborates well with personnel at all levels to ensure thorough understanding of necessary treatment plans, procedures, and patient status.
Clinical Expertise | Critical & Emergent Care | Ambulatory & Surgical Care Leadership | Cross-Functional Communication | Patient & Family Relations | Patient Education OSHA & HIPAA Compliance | Confidentiality | Electronic Medical Records (EMR) | Microsoft Office Medical Team Collaboration | Staff Training & Development | Performance Assessment | Medical Research
Prepared patients for surgery, administered pre-op medications and IVs, and coordinated with OR team, patient, and family to develop and revise pre-op care plan.
- Served as a strong team leader in handling daily activities on the unit, acted as a resource to team members, and promoted and enhanced collaborative relationships
- Managed Phase 2 post-op care for day surgery patients, including wound care, IV medication, PICC line maintenance, and other post-op medical issues
- Demonstrated knowledge and skills necessary to provide care appropriate to patient needs, including teaching and discharge planning
Provided nursing care to surgical patients and developed individual plans of care in collaboration with other members of the healthcare team in accordance with established guidelines and standards of nursing care.
- Collaborated with other disciplines to ensure patient safety, create an environment of healing, and facilitate the achievement of exceptional outcomes for patients
- Educated patients and their families on how to manage their illness or injury, including post-treatment home care needs and medication administration
AHA Basic Life Support (BLS)
Resume written by Lezlie Garr
Why this resume works
Registered Nurse Resume Skills and Keywords
Computers are firmly integrated into the modern medical world, and the hiring process is no exception. Busy hiring teams will use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to check applications for specific registered nurse resume keywords. If your resume doesn’t include the terms they look for, then you might be filtered out automatically. That’s why adding the right resume skills to your resume is so important. They can help you make it past the filters and get seen by real people.
Top Registered Nurse Resume Skills
- Preventative healthcare
- Patient evaluation
- Strong clinical judgment
- Verbal and written communication
- Charting and clinical documentation
- Intravenous therapies
- Medical laboratory procedures
- Compassion
- Wound care
- Decision making
- Attention to detail
- Resilience
- Safe patient transfers
- Microsoft Office
- Patient education
- Fall reduction
- Problem-solving
- Time management
- Stamina
- Strong ethical compass
- Patient confidentiality
- Teamwork
- Adaptability
- HIPAA
- Diagnostics
- Specimen collection
- Blood draws
- Pain management
- Catheterization
- Domain knowledge (ICU, pediatrics, OB/GYN, etc.)
Your resume should be written with the same care and precision you would use for a report about a patient. Here are five tips for writing a resume that will help get you hired.
1. Make a good first impression
Traditional resume formatting has become the standard for a reason: it lets you explain a lot of information very quickly. One major element of this format is your resume summary, which is the first full paragraph between your header and your job history. This summary works like an abstract, explaining the rest of your resume in two or three sentences.
One great registered nurse resume example summary is, “Experienced registered nurse eager to provide compassionate and ethical patient care at Brown Hospital. 12+ years of nursing experience include coordinating patient care during staff shortages, assisting with complex medical issues, and maintaining a positive attitude in fast-paced environments.”
Employers reading this summary will take away three important facts. First, they’ll understand what the nurse considers to be their most important skills. Second, they know how long that nurse has been in the industry. Finally, they see three significant past successes that are relevant to the position. This combination helps employers decide whether to consider the candidate for an interview.
2. Tailor your resume to the position
Registered nurses can work in a variety of different environments, from large emergency rooms to OB/GYN to small family clinics. It’s not uncommon for nurses to move from one part of the field to another. That means that you may be applying for positions with major differences at the same time.
If that’s the case, take the time to edit your resume for each job. Years of experience in pediatrics will interest family medicine clinics but might not matter in an ER. Highlighting your ability to quickly calm down anxious families, on the other hand, makes that experience relevant to ERs. If you have the necessary skills and experience for a position, editing your resume helps you best demonstrate that to employers.
3. Include your most relevant skills
One way to highlight your registered nurse skills outside of your work history is to just list them out. A skills section is a dedicated heading under which you can list abilities that might not make sense elsewhere.
For example, if you’re familiar with uncommon medical software, you can list that under your skills. Since it’s on your resume, ATS filters can spot it. That can give you an edge with employers that use that software.
An added bonus of the skills section is that it saves hiring teams time. When you make it easier for people to skim your resume, you’re showing consideration for their experience. That might be all it takes to convince them to interview you.
4. Split your education and certifications
The field of nursing is constantly evolving. Registered nurses often take continuing education and certification courses to stay up to date with technology and best practices. If you have certifications, accreditations, or professional memberships, give them their own section.
Certifications like Basic Life Support (BLS) and Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) are often necessary to get hired. More advanced certificates like Critical Care Registered Nursing (CCRN) aren’t always required, but they’re valuable for moving into roles with more responsibility. When you put these certificates in their own section, readers can spot them easily and use them to make hiring decisions.
5. Be specific whenever possible
Finally, how you write your resume is just as important as what you include. Passive voice and generic verbs can confuse readers or leave your actual responsibilities unclear.
Avoid phrases like:
- Participated in
- Attended
- Responsible for
- Worked with
Instead, describe exactly what you did with action verbs like:
- Cared for
- Provided
- Administered
- Communicated
- Advised
- Trained
- Developed
