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Table of contents

Popular nursing resumes
How to write a nursing resume in just 6 steps
Nursing resume examples by experience level
Add a cover letter
Facts about the nursing industry
Key takeaways for your nursing resume
Frequently asked questions

Nurses like yourself are in a great position. Your skills are in demand all over the country — and job growth shows no signs of slowing down.

But, even with bountiful opportunities, there will always be competition for the best jobs. This is why you need a great resume. Let us walk you through the process.

This guide will show you:

Examples of popular nursing resumes.
How to write a nursing resume in 2024.
Nursing resumes at different experience levels.
Why cover letters are still important.
Key takeaways as you begin your job search.

Ready to make your resume right now? Head directly to our Resume Generator. There, you can choose a design of your liking and get advice and easy-to-edit, auto-generated text for every section.

Popular nursing resumes

You know what it takes to be a great nurse — now you need to know how to make a resume that shows potential employers you are who they need.

There are many different types of nurses, and we have resume examples for most of them. Here are three of our most popular examples, all of which have been made in our Resume Builder:

Are you looking for a different job title? Check out our full library of nursing resumes:

Browse other popular samples

Related Guides & Tips

33 Free Online Certifications to Boost Your Resume in 2020

How to write a nursing resume in just 6 steps

Want to land the nursing job of your dreams? You need a great resume.

From your choice of a header to the special certifications only nurses need to list, every detail is important to creating the perfect resume.

A great resume outline will always include the following:

Contact info in the header.
A well-written, targeted resume profile.
At least one — if not more! — sections for skills.
A reverse-chronological list of work experience.
A full accounting of credentials in an education section.
Optional sections to help you stand out.

Let’s take a deeper dive into each of these points.

Step 1

Start with your header

The purpose of your resume is to get called for an interview, so your header should have up-to-date and easy-to-read contact information. The essential components are your name, phone numbers, professional email address, location and LinkedIn profile.

As a nurse, you may want to use a resume header that is professional — not too colorful or showy. While you can add a dose of your personality, try to keep the reader focused on your accomplishments.

Writing tip

Consider adding your license or professional title, like “Registered Nurse (RN),” in your header to make your qualifications immediately apparent.

Step 2

Add a professional summary or resume objective

Making a good first impression is important.

That’s why you should spend all the time you need writing a strong resume profile.

There are two types of profiles, each one good for different types of candidates:

Job seekers with at least five years of relevant experience should write a professional summary. Summaries offer a four- to five-sentence overview of a candidate’s strengths.

Job seekers who are entry-level or transitioning into a new field should consider writing a resume objective. Objective statements are more goal-oriented, explicitly saying what you can offer the employer and what you hope to gain from the job.

Ultimately, both profiles serve the same purpose — to make the hiring manager think you are the BEST qualified candidate for the position.

The trick is customizing your profile for every job. Generic resumes get overlooked, even blocked by a company’s resume screening system. You can counteract this by reading the job description closely and adding the right keywords.

Writing tip

Don’t forget to highlight your specialties in your professional summary. Nursing has many subspecialties, and your skills will be defined by exactly what type of nurse you are. Make sure to list your focus areas up front.

Professional summary for nursing resume example:

Thoughtful and compassionate registered nurse with over 10 years of experience, specializing in emergency care. Demonstrated proficiency in providing acute nursing care to critically ill patients, implementing medical care plans and maintaining standard unit activities. Proven ability to direct and supervise patient care provided by nursing personnel, ensuring the highest quality of care even in the absence of the head nurse. Recognized for adapting quickly to fast-paced, high-stress environments.

Sample objective for nursing resume example:

Dedicated registered nurse seeking a challenging entry-level role in the Emergency Care Nursing Training Program. Recent graduate from a top-tier nursing school where I gained hands-on experience in providing acute care, implementing medical care plans and coordinating with health care teams. As a fast learner and critical thinker, I aim to leverage my strong academic foundation and passion for patient-centered care to provide high-quality care to patients in acute settings.

Step 3

Showcase your skills

From keeping track of every patient’s status and needs to soothing a worried family member, you use your skills daily. Your resume’s skills section needs to showcase your specific strengths to improve the health of your job search.

You use hard skills to handle the technical challenges that arise, from handling IVs to administering CPR. You use soft skills to build relationships with your colleagues and show patients the proper empathy and care.

It’s not a matter of hard vs soft skills. They actually work hand-in-hand to create the ideal nursing candidate.

Most importantly — make sure your resume includes a mix of skills. Most companies favor candidates with a well-rounded skill set.

Nursing is such a detail-oriented profession that your skills should be as specific as possible. When you’re adding computer skills to your resume, for example, name the specific program. In other words, instead of writing “telemedicine,” you should write “SimplePractice.”

Hard and soft skills for a nursing resume

Hard Skills

Patient care
Electronic health records (EHR)
Basic life support (BLS)
Safety protocols

Soft Skills

Problem-solving
Empathy
Time management
Resilience

Step 4

Fill in your work experience

As a nurse, your work experience is anything but boring and neither should the work history section of your resume.

Whether you’re monitoring patients, administering medications or creating a personalized care plan, you’re always engaged in the job at hand. But, how best to represent that experience on your resume?

There are a few things to keep in mind when you write your experience section:

Focus on quantifiable metrics rather than job duties. Achievements you can quantify make your work history more vivid. For example, mention the number of patients you treat on average and the percentage of patient satisfaction.
Use action words to give your experience extra punch. Words like “acted as,” “forged” and “created” give your resume an action-oriented feel.
Show your career progression. List your previous positions in reverse-chronological order, beginning with the most recent job.

Writing tip

Don’t overlook your soft skills. Your ability to maintain composure and make quick decisions in a high-pressure, emergency environment is as critical to your success as any of your technical skills.

Sample nursing work experience entry:

Registered Nurse, Bakersfield Memorial Hospital
Menlo Park, CA
January 2019 – Current

Maintained a welcoming front reception area, including lost and found, resulting in a 15% reduction in lost items reported by parents.
Answered and redirected phone calls, utilizing visitor management systems to generate a 25% reduction in unauthorized visitors to the campus.
Assisted with summer ordering bulk supplies, organizing and coding the receipts for a 15% reduction in accounting errors.
Reinvented the process for ordering student lunches, leading to an 8% increase in student satisfaction.
Helped schedule and coordinate events for campus directors, improving the efficiency of event and meeting coordination.
Collaborated with Front Desk team to divide tasks and share workload, and supported communication systems across multiple buildings and many teams, resulting in a 20% reduction in errors in communication systems.

Step 5

Highlight your education (and nursing credentials)

For nurses like you, the education section can get confusing.

Degrees, licensures, certifications, awards, honors… the credentials begin to pile up quickly for nursing professionals. And so do the questions.

Do certifications go in the education section? Where should I list my licensures? Should all of this go before or after my bachelor’s degree?

These questions are asked so often that the American Nursing Association released guidelines for displaying credentials.

Here’s the preferred order of credentials for nurses:

Highest earned degree
Licensure
State designations or requirements
National certifications
Awards and honors
Other recognitions

We can’t argue with the experts. That being said, if you have more than one award or recognition, we suggest creating a separate section for Awards and Honors. Certifications can also go in a separate section if you have several.

Nursing education entry example:

Education

Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)
University of Illinois Chicago | Chicago, IL | May 2019
Relevant coursework: Pediatric Nursing, Emergency Care, Medical-surgical Nursing, Community Health Nursing

Licensure

Registered Nurse (RN)
Illinois Board of Nursing | License Number: ####### | Valid Through MM/YYYY

State Designations

Certified Registered Nurse Practitioner – Family (CRNP-Family)
Illinois Board of Nursing | License Number: ####### | Valid Through MM/YYYY

National Certifications

Family Nurse Practitioner-Board Certified (FNP-BC)
American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) | Valid Through MM/YYYY

Basic Life Support (BLS) and Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS)
American Heart Association | Valid Through MM/YYYY

Writing tip

Make sure to include relevant coursework and specializations. This is especially important if you want a job in a specialized institution.

Step 6

Consider adding special sections

You’ve had plenty of experiences outside of the hospital or care center that have made you the nurse you are today. Now you need to share those experiences on your resume.

You can do that by adding special sections. While the following sections are optional, we’ve seen them appear on some of the most successful nursing candidates’ resumes:

Volunteer work: Volunteering is a great way to advance your career and help your community. Consider adding free clinics, medical missions, disaster relief efforts, hospice care or other volunteer efforts to your resume.
Language proficiency: Knowing a second or third language can be a major benefit in your nursing job search and open you up to opportunities in places you never imagined working.
Hobbies and interests: Hobbies are a great addition to your resume — just make sure they’re relevant. A nurse might want to include health and wellness work, like interest in yoga or running marathons.

Writing tip

While certifications are considered “nice to have” for most careers, they are absolutely essential for nursing. Certifications can be listed in your education section, immediately after listing your degrees and licensure.

Before we move on — don’t forget to choose an appropriate nursing resume template. Resume templates offer a variety of designs and styles, from creative templates that are eye-catching and bold toprofessional templates that are straightforward and easy to scan.

And for people who want immediate access to a template, there are free downloadable options for Microsoft Word and Google Docs.

Nursing resume examples by experience level

Your experience level plays a huge role in the types of jobs you’re qualified for. Experience also tells you how your resume should be organized.

There are three resume formats, and each one is well-suited for a different career stage:

Entry-level job seekers should use a functional resume format.
Midcareer job seekers would be served best by a combination resume format.
Senior job seekers would benefit from a chronological resume format.

Let’s review a visual example of each format.

Entry-level nursing resume example

Functional resume entry level example nurse practitioner

Create your resume

What makes this a great nursing resume example

A compelling resume objective
This candidate wrote a career objective rather than a professional summary. Why? Because an objective statement explicitly focuses on goals and the needs you can fill for the company. This perfectly serves the needs of less-experienced candidates.
Choice of the best entry-level resume format
When you are fresh out of school, you don’t have much professional experience to draw upon. This resume fixes that problem by focusing on skills the applicant picked up while doing clinical rotations in school. The skills are spread across two sections, taking up more real estate than the experience section.
Extra skills sections
Employers want to know why they should hire you — and you don’t have much time to make your case. The “Professional Skills” section in this example includes bold headers for each skill category, making it easy to see the applicant’s top selling points at a glance.

Midcareer nursing resume example

Combination resume mid career example nurse practitioner

Create your resume

What makes this a great nursing resume example

A prominent skills section
When you’re in your midcareer, you may want to highlight particular skills that elevate you above similarly qualified candidates. This candidate does this by placing a skills section directly above his work history. Without taking up too much space, it sets the tone for the rest of the resume.
Work experience shows progress
After a few years of on-the-job experience, nurses tend to pick up additional certifications and licensures. You can highlight this upward trajectory in a well-placed work history section. See how this candidate went from a licensed practical nurse (LPN) to a registered nurse (RN) and finally a nurse practitioner (NP).
The professional summary is strong
A professional summary is the perfect place to touch on career highlights. This candidate mentions their certification (ACNP). They also touch on their experience of “organizing projects,” “managing chronic health conditions” and “improving the quality of patient care.”

Experienced nursing resume example

Chronological resume example senior nurse practitioner

Create your resume

What makes this a great nursing resume example

Licensure is in the header
Once you’re well established in your career, you can consider including your licensure in your header. This candidate includes NP after his name to tell the employer he is a nurse practitioner.
The licensure section is well placed
Additionally, the candidate’s licensure is prominently featured directly beneath the education section. (Experts recommend including your licenses following your education.) After that, some candidates may want to include a list of their notable professional certifications.
Work experience is prominent
The work history section is essential for experienced nurses. Here, the applicant lays out his work history in reverse-chronological order, beginning with the most recent job. The section includes bullet points for every position and takes up far more space than anything else on the page.

Add a cover letter

Create your cover letter

You know what the top candidates always add to their applications? A cover letter.

Your cover letter is an opportunity to show who you are as a candidate and discuss any aspects of your resume that need explaining, like a lengthy employment gap. To learn how to write a cover letter that gets you the interview, review our field-tested cover letter examples and our guide on proper cover letter formatting.

If you’re pressed for time, head directly to our Cover Letter Builder instead, which generates text specifically written for nursing jobs. From there, you can personalize the content to match your writing style and specific experience. You’ll greatly enhance your prospect of landing an interview quickly.

Now, let’s see your earning potential if you put together a top-shelf application.

Facts about the nursing industry

You have what it takes to be a great nurse — but do you know exactly what’s in store for you throughout your career?

Here are a few facts that explain why nailing your nursing resume is so important.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, registered nurses held about 3.1 million jobs in 2021 and 60% of them work in hospitals.
Median salaries for job titles in this field:
- Registered nurses can earn a median salary of $99,076 per year
- Emergency room nurses earn a median salary of $120,273 per year
- Pediatric nurse practitioners earn a median salary of $159,417 per year
Employment in the nursing field is projected to be positive from 2021 to 2031, growing 6% for registered nurses, 40% for nurse practitioners and 6% for licensed practical nurses.

Key takeaways for your nursing resume

List your specialties

Nursing has a huge variety of subspecialties. Make your particular realm of knowledge clear on your resume.
Tailor to each job posting

Read the job posting closely, highlighting the skills and abilities. Make sure to include those in your resume.
Include licensure and certifications

Licenses and certifications are critical for nurses. Add them to your resume, and consider putting your title in the header.
Detail your clinical experience

For new graduates, clinical rotations are important work experience. Be specific about the type of care you provided during that time.
Add volunteer work

Whether you assisted in disaster relief efforts or provided free medical care in underserved communities, your volunteering is essential.
Proofread carefully

Spelling and grammar errors can make your resume look unprofessional. After you proofread, have a friend or mentor take a look as well.
Create a cover letter

Dedicate time to making a personalized cover letter to show your enthusiasm for contributing to the health care team.

Frequently asked questions

Last Updated: July 07, 2024

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Don is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) with more than 10 years’ experience creating digital content, including four years helping job seekers develop their careers. He holds an M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University.