Nursing Resume Example & Guide [2024]

The following nursing resume example will provide you with valuable tips to help you write a resume that best highlights your experience and qualifications. Further, we provide you with a few bonus tips in the end so be sure to check it all out!

A concise and correctly formatted professional resume is as important as ever.

How to write your nursing resume

• Start your Nursing resume with a concise resume summary
• Focus on quantifying your achievements, not just nursing duties
• Match your nursing skills list with the skills required in the job description
• Only add relevant information to your bullets in your employment history
• Always personalize every resume you send. Tailor the contents of your resume to the requirements of the job description

 

A great way to start is to be sure to reference keywords from the job description and highlight any skills, awards, and certifications in the resume summary, that match with the job listing requirements.

Let's start by looking at an example of a resume for a Clinical Nursing Specialist with 5 years of experience, and then dive into the guide.

Nursing Resume Example using our Traditional Resume Template

 

 

Nursing resume sample you can copy and use

Stephanie Ellis
Energetic and self-directed Clinical Nursing Specialist

163 Cliffside Drive, 13057, East Syracuse, NY, US
stephanie@ellis.com

About me

Dedicated, professional and committed Clinical Nursing Specialist with 5 years of experience within the Healthcare domain. Highly motivated, patient-focused, dependable, flexible, sincere and devoted.

Excellent interpersonal and team-building skills, demonstrates effective communication with individuals on all levels and builds rapport easily. An employee who exhibits a high aptitude for learning new skills.

Experience

Clinical Nursing Specialist, New Port Hospital - Manhattan, New York

Jul 2016 - currently employed

• Consulting: Provides advice, feedback and development resources to improve the effectiveness of individuals and teams. 20 nurses across 2 teams.
• Provides Expert Clinical Consultation to improve patient outcomes
• Quality Improvement: Systematic approach to reduction or elimination of errors, work backflow
• Actively participates in creating and implementing improvements to achieve clinical, satisfaction and/or efficiency outcomes
• Nursing Process: Utilizes the nursing process to provide holistic, compassionate, safe, high quality and population based care of up to 15 patients a day.
• Patient Safety: Demonstrates practices that support safety with recognition of variations in populations served, preventing harm to patients, families, employees, and themselves

Clinical Nursing Specialist, Watersprings Hospital - West Bay, Florida

Sep 2014 - Jun 2016

• Provides feedback to management on staff performance evaluations
• Continually evaluates quality and safety performance, identifies improvement opportunities and plans and implements programs for improvement
• As part of a multidisciplinary team, acting as a change agent to develop system performance standards to improve patient outcomes
• Assists in the development, implementation, management, marketing, and evaluation of a program of specialty and/or overall program
• Provides safety, comfort care, and treatment of patients according to established legal, ethical, and institutional standards
• Initiates and leads performance improvement activities with a focus on achieving top quartile on clinical indicators

Education

MSc in Nursing (MSN), Adelphi University - New York

Sep 2012 - Aug 2014

Professional skills

Nursing supervision
Care plan consulting
Quality assurance
Patient advocacy
RN training & mentorship
Clinical data analysis
Change management
Best practise development
Excellent communication skills

 

Facts about this Nursing resume:

• Candidate is applying for a clinical nursing specialist position
• Candidate uses the reverse-chronological format
• Candidate has over 5+ years of experience
• Candidate emphasize key nursing skills

 

3 tips to help you compose a Nursing resume

It is crucial that you provide a thorough and professional approach to your resume. We made a digestive guide for you to keep you on your toes while creating a simple, yet effective and professional resume.

#1 - A powerful profile summary will make the recruiter want to look further

Starting a resume on the right foot is important. Be brief and concise in your profile summary, and do not use interposed phrases. Focus on a few core key competences you have that will fit the job and is part of the job listing description.

Do

• Be concise in your profile summary. Focus on a few key competences and skills you have that will fit the job and is part of the job description.

Don't

• Use interposed phrases. The reader doesn't care about fillers. The purpose is to tell the reader exactly how you fit the role and make the reader want to read on. Don't bore them!

Example from above:

"Dedicated, professional and committed Clinical Nursing Specialist with 5 years of experience within the Healthcare domain. Highly motivated, patient-focused, dependable, flexible, sincere and devoted. 

Excellent interpersonal and team-building skills, demonstrates effective communication with individuals on all levels and builds rapport easily. An employee who exhibits a high aptitude for learning new skills."

Very concise way of embedding important skills. Including skills like patient-focused, sincere, and the ability to learn provide you with an excellent way to start on the summary, making you able to build it further.

A great way to get feedback about your overall profile is by asking people from your network about the value which you bring. You might be surprised how they respond. We made a guide about networking and how to stay on top of this game, don't miss these valuable tips.

#2 - Quantify some of your achievements or duties

If you can answer the questions, “How many?” or “How much?”, you should try to include that number. For instance:

• How many patients did you take care of in your unit?
• How many hours did you work per rotation?
• How many beds are there in your hospital?
• How many nurses did you work with, or train?

Quantification gives the hiring manager a much clearer picture of your skills and abilities because of the scope it provides.

Here is an example of a simple duty:

"Provided a holistic, compassionate, safe, high quality and population based care during every day work rotations."

Below is the same duty with more details added, which tells the employer how you did your work:

"Nursing Process: Utilizes the nursing process to provide holistic, compassionate, safe, high quality and population based care of up to 15 patients a day."

By quantifying a duty, it goes to show that with your abilities you balance the act of the nursing process while also focusing on nursing as many as possible. It sends a clear message to the employer or recruiter about your abilities and work ethics.

#3 - Focus your skills around care, communication and technical skills

The ability to care for others and communicate about it, is a core function of a nurse. Showing that you value these abilities highly will make the employer know that you understand this and are truly passionate about what you do.

It would also be important to signal your ability to use technical instruments or equipment. A good understanding of the instruments, and putting them to correct use with the patient in mind, will display your full allround skill set.

Lastly, do not forget any certificates or any personal awards you might have received. 

If you are a Clinical Nurse Specialist, then listing the CNS-BC certification and from which organization, would be ideal. You might also have received awards on your path, and by listing them to promote yourself will leverage you above other candidates with the exact same educational level and experience.

Learn more about how to build your skills into your resume. In our article we cover soft and hard skills from A to Z.

#Bonus - Key action verbs for Nurses

By using action verbs you can add clarity, depth, and distinction to your resume. Action verbs make great openers for experience bullet points and can also be utilized on cover letters to target them to specific positions.

• Adhered
• Administered
• Applied
• Assessed
• Assisted
• Built
• Collaborated
• Communicated
• Contributed
• Decided
• Delegated
• Delivered
• Demonstrated
• Developed
• Directed
• Displayed
• Educated
• Ensured
• Evaluated
• Executed
• Explained
• Followed
• Helped
• Led
• Listened
• Managed
• Measured
• Negotiated
• Observed
• Performed
• Planned
• Preserved
• Provided
• Reacted
• Reported
• Responded
• Scheduled
• Shared
• Supervised
• Taught
• Tracked
• Trained
• Treated
• Updated
• Wrote

If you want to know more about using verbs in your resume, check out How To Use Power Words In Your Resume.

We hope that you enjoyed reading this article, and that we provided you with a few tips and advice about writing a resume.

Be sure to check out our simple resume builder to make sure you use a clean formatted free resume template.