Nursing Resume Template Example

The most effective resume template for nursing positions is clean, organized, and highlights your most relevant qualifications and past professional achievements. There is no need to worry about choosing a creative look with graphics and colors. Focus on making your key skills like case management, acute care, and post-operative monitoring stand out in an easy-to-read format.

How To Write a Nursing Resume

A nursing resume should be a concise description of your job history, nursing credentials, and areas of specialization in nursing. These are the crucial sections to add to your resume:

  • Contact information
  • Profile
  • Key skills
  • Professional experience
  • Education and certifications

Contact information

At the top of your resume, include your full name, phone number, and email address, as well as your city and state. You can add your full mailing address, but it’s optional. Also, you can include a link to your LinkedIn profile.

Example

Kathryn Gomez

(123) 456-7890
[email protected]
LinkedIn | Portfolio
City, State Abbreviation Zip Code

Profile

Right below your contact information, capture the reader’s attention with a compelling profile. This is a short summary of how long you’ve worked as a nurse, along with a few career specializations and accomplishments.

Key skills

Employers want to hire nurses who have both the hard and soft skills needed to perform well in their role. Listing out your top skills – and aligning them with the job postings you’re applying for – can help your resume stand out. It can also help your resume pass a screening process done by an Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

Common hard and soft skills for nursing

Hard Skills Soft Skills
Electronic Health Records (EHR) Communications
Orthopedics Emotional intelligence and compassion
Triage Organized
Vital signs monitoring Problem-solving
Wound care Teamwork

Resume writer’s tip: Use common action verbs

Utilizing strong verbs in your resume can better illustrate your accomplishments and keep the reader more engaged. Some strong verbs that work well for nursing resumes include:

  • Administered
  • Collaborated
  • Diagnosed
  • Interfaced
  • Resolved
  • Supported
  • Treated

Professional experience

The bulk of your resume will be the section that details your job history. For each position, include your job title, employer name, city/state, and dates of employment. Then, share three to five bullet points that showcase your accomplishments at that job.

Example

Registered Nurse (RN), Saint Marks Memorial Hospital, Hoboken, NJ

October 2021 – present

  • Coordinate with multi-disciplinary teams to enhance clinical operations and care standards, resulting in a 15% reduction in average length of stay
  • Lead, mentor, and coach a team of eight licensed practice nurses (LPNs) in a unit with over 25 beds to ensure compliance with disease prevention protocols
  • Perform post-operative health exams for life-threatening conditions and infections, develop rehabilitative treatment plans, and provide emotional support to patients
  • Achieved a 97% patient satisfaction score for compassionate care

RN, Staten Island University Hospital, Staten Island, NY

July 2018 – September 2021

  • Delivered high-quality care to a diverse patient population at a trauma center with over 200 beds and a 1-to-6 patient ratio
  • Conducted comprehensive assessments for incoming patients and prepared individualized care plans with physicians
  • Provided support to physicians and surgeons by monitoring patient vital signs, administering medication, and preparing patients for surgical procedures
  • Collaborated to improve clinical operations, which reduced new patient wait time by 65%

Resume writer’s tip: Quantify your experience

Hiring managers are attracted to candidates who they think can drive results and enhance their organizations in some way. This is why a good resume strategy is to share data and numbers to describe your past accomplishments.

Check out our example for a better idea of how to do this:

Do
  • Collaborate with a multidisciplinary team of over 15 health care professionals to improve patient outcomes, resulting in a 25% reduction in infection rates
Don't
  • Collaborate with a multidisciplinary health care team to improve patient outcomes

What if you don’t have experience?

Entry-level job seekers in nursing may not have a vast job history to fill up their resumes, but there are other pertinent items that you can include. For instance, it’s totally acceptable to include any internship or volunteer work that you’ve done in a health care-related capacity. You can also include past work experiences that might have transferable skills. If you’ve worked as a lifeguard or camp counselor, for example, you’ve had a lot of exposure to working with diverse populations, including children, parents, and more.

Education and certifications

Nursing requires you to have completed some level of nursing studies as well as earned your license. You may have also earned certifications to work in a specialized area of nursing, so include those as well.

Example

Education

Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Nursing, August 2014 – May 2018
Wagner College, Staten Island, NY

Certifications

  • RN, State of New Jersey, License #456789, 2019
  • RN, State of New York, License #123456, 2018

Nursing Resume Template Text Example

Kathryn Gomez

(123) 456-7890
[email protected]
LinkedIn | Portfolio
City, State Abbreviation zip code

Profile

An RN with five years of experience providing quality health care services to diverse patient populations. Achieved consistently high levels of patient satisfaction and helped drive positive patient outcomes. Specializations include post-operative care, patient rehabilitation, supervising LPNs, and case management.

Key Skills

  • Clinical operations
  • Electronic Health Records (EHR)
  • Patient-centered care
  • Team management
  • Trauma care

Professional Experience

RN, Saint Marks Memorial Hospital, Hoboken, NJ
October 2021 – present

  • Coordinate with multi-disciplinary teams to enhance clinical operations and care standards, resulting in a 15% reduction in average length of stay
  • Lead, mentor, and coach a team of eight LPNs in a unit with over 25 beds to ensure compliance with disease prevention protocols
  • Perform post-operative health exams for life-threatening conditions and infections, develop rehabilitative treatment plans, and provide emotional support to patients
  • Achieved a 97% patient satisfaction score for compassionate care

RN, Staten Island University Hospital, Staten Island, NY
July 2018 – September 2021

  • Delivered high-quality care to a diverse patient population at a trauma center with over 200 beds and a 1:6 patient ratio
  • Conducted comprehensive assessments for incoming patients and prepared individualized care plans with physicians
  • Provided support to physicians and surgeons by monitoring patient vital signs, administering medication, and preparing patients for surgical procedures
  • Collaborated to improve clinical operations, which reduced new patient wait time by 65%

Education

Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Nursing, August 2014 – May 2018
Wagner College, Staten Island, NY

Certifications

  • RN, State of New Jersey, License #456789, 2019
  • RN, State of New York, License #123456, 2018
Andrew Stoner

Executive Resume Writer and Career Coach

A resume should be a forward-looking value proposition that showcases your most relevant accomplishments for a target role — not a rear view summary of your previous roles and responsibilities.

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