Resumes for Nurses

If you're a registered nurse looking for a job, we have some good news for you.  In this publication, were going to run through the basics of putting together resumes for nurses.  We've covered several different professions up to this point, but the medical profession is a new one, and deserves some special comments with regard to structuring the resume.

Resume Styles for Nurses

As is the case with all resumes, the nurse first has to determine which particular resume style or resume format will best highlight their skills, knowledge, and work history.  We've talked about resume formats before, but it's worth reviewing again here:

• Functional Resume - a functional resume is a good choice for nurses or nursing students that don't have a lot of work experience to include in their resume.  That's because the functional resume emphasizes what you know, and not where you've worked.
• Chronological Resume - the chronological resume is a good choice if you've been working as a nurse for several years, or have progressed through the medical profession in a logical fashion.  The emphasis for this type of resume is on work experience gained over time.
• Combination Resume - the combination resume is considered the most marketable of the resume styles in use today.  If you have a lot of related experience as a nurse, and have learned many skills while on the job, then this is probably the best format to use when composing a resume.

Clinical and Related Experience

A nursing career offers its professionals a diverse set of experiences, some of which are so different that they are worth explicitly mentioning on a resume.  For example, you may have worked in a psychiatric ward or in a maternity ward.  Although the care given patients might follow the same guiding principles, the experiences of the nurse are going to be very different in these two settings.

Normally, we would focus on putting together an example resume for a nurse that would follow a standardized format.  We're going to make an exception here to conform to the norms and standards of the nursing and medical professional.  This means that where most professions would have included a simple summary of their skills and knowledge, we are going to recommend that nurses include a more detailed section describing their clinical experiences or expertise.

Sample Resume for Nurses

The sample resume we have for nurses is in the combination resume style that's been modified to accommodate clinical experience as mentioned above.  If you're new to the nursing profession, or are considering switching professions, then you can use one of the other formats, such as the functional style, to communicate to the hiring manager the knowledge you've acquired.

You can download our free sample here - Nurse Resume.  Our hope is that this resume will help give nurses trying to find a job a starting point, or at least examples that can help to stimulate some of your own ideas.  Your own experiences are what make you both unique and valuable to the job market.

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