CV for Nurses: Nursing CV Format, Examples and Free Templates

Download Qarera's free, ATS-ready nursing resume and CV template (Word + PDF) below — no sign-up, no credit card.

Download the free nursing resume template

A filled-in two-page registered nurse resume — professional summary, the licenses and certifications block with RN license number and expiry, clinical experience with unit type and patient ratios, education, and professional memberships. Written to United States conventions, because 62% of the live nurse postings we index are US-based. Download the editable Word file or the PDF.

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Why nursing resumes are different

What to include on a nursing resume

Every other nursing skills list is somebody's opinion about what matters. This one is a count taken from the live nurse jobs in our index: the specific skills employers ask for most often, and how often each one actually appears — so you can decide what earns space on a one or two-page CV.

Based on 3,312 live nurse postings on Qarera (mostly US and Australia, with the UK, Canada and Ireland), measured 2026-08-24.

• Patient safety10.2%

  The one clinical phrase worth putting in your summary line — pair it with a number: falls, CLABSI, medication-error or hand-hygiene results on your unit.

• Acute care8.3%

  Setting words are how a nurse manager judges transferability. Write the unit and acuity — '24-bed acute medical unit, 1:5 ratio' — not 'acute care experience'.

• ACLS (Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support)8%

  List the acronym and the full name together with the expiry date. 4.1% of postings name the American Heart Association (AHA) specifically, so add '(AHA)' if that is who certified you.

• Mental health7.7%

  Asked for well outside psychiatric units — de-escalation, risk assessment and safeguarding all count, and are worth a line even if your ward was medical.

• Teaching (patient, family and student education)7%

  Say which kind and how many: 'taught 30+ newly diagnosed diabetics to self-inject' reads far better than 'patient education'.

• Surgery (theatre and perioperative care)5.2%

  If you have theatre, pre-op or post-op experience, name the specialty and the case volume — it is what separates you from a general med-surg applicant.

• CPR4.2%

  Basic resuscitation is assumed but still keyword-matched, so list it with the issuing body and expiry rather than leaving it implied by ACLS.

• Pediatrics3.9%

  Mirror the posting's spelling — write 'pediatrics' when you apply in the UK, Ireland, Australia or India, because keyword filters do not treat the two spellings as the same word.

• Infection control3.2%

  Underused on nursing CVs and easy to quantify: audits, isolation precautions, PPE training or an outbreak response all qualify.

• Telehealth3.1%

  Newer and thinly claimed, so it differentiates — remote triage, virtual follow-up clinics or phone assessment protocols all count.

• Wound care3%

  Specific enough that ATS filters match it directly. Name the type (pressure ulcers, surgical wounds, negative-pressure therapy) rather than the category.

• Oncology2.8%

  Name the setting and say whether you are signed off to administer chemotherapy — that competency is the line most oncology units screen on.

• Medical records (charting)2.7%

  Do not write 'EHR documentation'. Write the product — Epic, Cerner, Meditech, EPR — because the product name is the string the ATS is matching.

Counted across 3,312 live nurse and registered-nurse postings indexed on Qarera on 24 August 2026: 62% United States, 19% Australia, then the UK, Canada, Ireland, India and New Zealand, with 4% carrying no country. This list is curated, not the raw ranking. We dropped words that name the job rather than a skill ('clinical' 58.8%, 'nursing' 47.2%, 'clinical experience', 'nursing care', 'registered nurse (RN)'), industry category words ('medical', 'healthcare', 'health care', 'facility', 'hospitals'), boilerplate our extractor lifts out of pay and benefits paragraphs ('compensation', 'market data', 'safe', 'actions', 'room', 'satellite'), and soft-skill words we could not tell you how to prove on a CV ('judgment', 'critical thinking', 'problem solving', 'decision making'). We also dropped the terms that are no more common in nursing than in hiring generally, measured against all 372,607 live postings we hold: 'communication' appears in 29.6% of nurse postings but 32.6% of every posting, 'collaboration' in 9.1% against 10.0%, 'leadership' in 20.5% against 16.3%, 'written communication' in 7.2% against 5.6% and 'mentoring' in 4.1% against 2.9%. They belong on a nursing CV, but they do not distinguish one, so they sit in the hard-and-soft skills list further down instead of here. License wording ('registration', 6.6%) is left out because it is an eligibility requirement rather than a skill — it belongs in the licenses block higher up this page. Near-duplicates are merged and reported under the higher-counting term only; the percentages are never added together. 'Mental health' (7.7%) absorbs 'behavioral health' (3.3%), ACLS (8.0%) absorbs 'life support' (4.8%) and the 4.1% of postings naming the American Heart Association, and 'surgery' (5.2%) absorbs 'surgical services' (2.8%). Labels keep the term we matched, expand acronyms, and add a parenthetical where the bare word is ambiguous — the percentage shown against a label is always the count for that single term.

Hard and soft skills for a nurse resume

The measured list above tells you what employers ask for. This one sorts the vocabulary into the two groups a screener treats differently: hard skills a keyword scanner can verify, and soft skills that count only when a bullet proves them.

ATS keywords for nurse resumes

These are the terms applicant tracking systems are tuned to find on a nurse resume. Embed them naturally in your bullets and skills section - don't list them as a flat keyword wall.

Sample nurse resume bullets

Use these as a model - replace the numbers and contexts with your own. Every bullet leads with a quantified outcome, not a duty.

1. 1

   Provided primary nursing care to a 1:5 patient assignment on a 24-bed medical-surgical unit (mixed surgical and oncology); sustained HCAHPS communication-with-nurses scores in the 90th percentile across 18 months.

2. 2

   Led the unit's CLABSI-reduction QI project as a member of the shared-governance council; achieved zero CLABSIs across two consecutive quarters and presented results at the hospital QI symposium.

3. 3

   Precepted 4 new-grad RNs through 12-week orientation; all four met independent practice milestones on schedule and three remain on the unit two years later (above hospital median).

4. 4

   Recognized chronic-pain medication discrepancy in EHR, escalated to pharmacist, and prevented a 5x dose error before administration; case used in unit safety huddle as an example of pre-administration cross-checking.

5. 5

   Charge nurse on alternating shifts; coordinated bed flow, staffing, and rapid-response activations across a 24-bed unit, partnered with house supervisor and bed-flow coordinators to keep median ED-to-floor time under 90 minutes.

6. 6

   Completed 60 CEU hours over 24 months including chemotherapy administration, dysrhythmia interpretation, and end-of-life care; expanded scope of practice to include chemo-eligible patients on the unit.

Recommended resume structure

Section order matters. ATS systems and human screeners both expect this layout for nurse resumes.

Common mistakes on nursing resumes

Frequently asked questions

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