Registered Nurse (RN) Resume Sample

As a registered nurse, you are the true workhorse of the healthcare field. Your skills and expertise are essential to hospitals and care centers, which would break down without you.

We have a simple question that will help you understand how to write an effective resume: What are the differences between the best registered nurse you know, and the worst one? Here are some possible responses, (and there are many more):

• Level of efficiency
• Level of competence
• Level of relevant knowledge
• Level of interest and general attitude
• Ability to multitask

The best RN you know rates high on these — the worst, low. For your resume, your goal is to show the attributes that make you similar to an RN you admire. By following our tips, you can achieve that goal.

Hook the Hiring Manager with a Career Objective

The resume objective is a great way to pique the hiring manager’s interest. By using one you can quickly show:

1. You’re a perfect fit for the job
2. You have the required licensure and education to get hired
3. Your resume is worth a full read

Here’s how the Career Objective on this resume accomplishes that. The parts in bold indicate the strong points that you should imitate:

– Dedicated Registered Nurse with 7+ years of experience assessing patient health problems, maintaining medical records, and executing nursing care plans. Seeking to leverage proven case management skills to assist your hospital. Licensed to practice in California, and possess a BS in Nursing.

The Career Objective is effective because it immediately tells the hiring manager the critical information they need to hire you. Together, the bolded parts tell the hiring manager the following:

• How many years of experience you have (so they don’t have to do the math)
• How you hope to help the hiring manager’s company with your skills
• Where you are licensed to practice
• What type of degree you hold

By including that information, you will hook the hiring manager. Next up — your Professional Experience.

Professional Experience: Bullet Points, Quantification, Achievements, & Skills

If that seems like a lot, don’t panic, it’s easy. We’ll begin with bullet points:

1. Bullet points should begin with an action verb

Action verbs give your resume a feeling of life and gusto. If you start your bullet points with pronouns (like ‘I’ or ‘my’) or adverbs (like ‘quickly’ or ‘efficiently’) your bullet points will sound weak and deflated, adding a resume action verb is a quick and easy way to enhance all your bullets.

2. Bullet points should be quantified

‘Quantified’ just means that you should add numbers to your bullet points where you can. Quantifying your resume helps the hiring manager get a better grasp of your skills and abilities. Here are some examples from the registered nurse resume above:

• Supervise 30+ nursing staff and manage patient care in a 98 bed facility
• Train and mentor new staff with the newest innovations in patient care methodology, increasing efficiency and reducing labor needs by 10%
• Accumulated 240 hours of intensive clinical experience managing 4 patients simultaneously, under supervision

There are numerous ways to quantify your resume, but let’s go over five ways information is quantified in this example resume:

1. How many staff members he or she supervised
2. How many beds were in the hospital
3. How much they increased efficiency (and therefore reduced labor needs, saving the company money)
4. How many hours of clinical experience he or she gained
5. How many patients he or she managed

3. Bullet points should be achievement oriented

‘Achievement oriented’ just means that your bullet points should boast your achievements, instead of being just a boring list of tasks you’ve handled. Let’s take one of the bullet points above to make the point clear:

Right:

Train and mentor new staff with the newest innovations in patient care methodology, increasing efficiency and reducing labor needs by 10%

Wrong:

Train and mentor new staff with the newest innovations in patient care methodology

In the wrong example, you can only see a simple task. In the right example, you can see the effects of doing that task — the registered nurse increased the efficiency of the clinic and reduced labor needs by 10%. Hiring managers love to see this kind of achievement related information — it’s a signal to them that says “I’m competent.”

4. How to handle your skills

There are many ways to handle the skills section on your resume, and you can read our full skills section writing guide here. The skills section on this resume somewhat different and unique — and it was done this way to keep all of the information on one single page.

For each place this registered nurse worked, she’s created a separate skills section indicating the major skills she used. As a nurse, your required skillsets will vary widely depending on the type of treatment your patients require.

Again, this is just one way of handling it. You could also have a “Core Competencies” or “Skills” section at the top or bottom of your resume, and simply have a bullet point list. That would be perfectly acceptable.

Licenses & Certifications: Don’t Forget Them!

As a healthcare employee, this section is crucial to include on your resume. The licenses and certifications you’ve earned not only make it possible for you to work in a certain state, they also increase your value in the eyes of a hiring manager depending on how many you’ve earned. Make sure to include:

• Your license number(s)
• The state(s) you can practice in
• When your license(s) expire
• When your certification(s) expire

Enhance Important Points with Adjectives

Strategically using adjectives can help emphasize and enhance the most important points on your resume – helping them stand out even more to the hiring manager.

We’ve compiled some of the best adjectives for nursing positions below:

Agile	Determined	Extensive	Passionate
Committed	Devoted	Flexible	Reliable
Conscientious	Diverse	Genuine	Sincere
Dependable	Enthusiastic	Meticulous	Wholehearted

 

Check out our list of 135 power adjectives for resumes and in-depth guide for details on exactly how to use adjectives to empower your resume.

And that’s it! Don’t forget that you’ll also need to learn how to write a cover letter to seal the deal.

Our professional resume builder also provides a viable alternative to writing your own resume.

Good luck on your job search!