39 Nursing skills for resume (And how to show them)
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Nursing skills are a real asset of your resume. Along with your nursing degree and an RN certification, your hard and soft skills showcase your ability to get the job done.
Like it or not, nursing is a skill-based profession. That's why highlighting the right technical and communication skills on your resume can give you an edge against the competition. In today's article, you'll find the exact key skills to add to your nursing resume plus professional tips on how to describe them effectively.
| Topics | Details |
|---|---|
| 1. Clinical Nursing Skills | details... |
| 2. Patient and Family Interaction | details... |
| 3. Technical and Administrative Skills | details... |
| 4. Leadership Skills | details... |
| 5. Soft Skills | details... |
How to use this article? The list of nursing resume skills is grouped by categories for your convenience. Click on the hard skills or soft skills you like to learn more about them.
Top 39 Essential Nursing Skills
We have put together a list of the most common nursing skills. These skills are suitable for every nursing specialization, including Public Health Nurses, Registered Nurses, Nursing Directors, Nurse Practitioners, Nurse Educators, and more.
Clinical Nursing Skills
All nurses must know the basics of clinical care and have the essential skills for the nursing practice. These nursing skills demonstrate your ability to provide safe and effective care while making an impact on patient outcomes. The required skills may vary depending on your role. However, such skills as patient assessment, vital sign monitoring, and medication administration are essential for every nurse regardless of their specialization.
Emphasizing your clinical expertise through skills also demonstrates that you are confident, equipped with the relevant knowledge and skills, and are an asset to any healthcare team.
- Patient Assessment
- Checking and Monitoring Vital Signs
- Administering Medication
- IV Line Placement and Infusions
- Emergency and Critical Care Nursing
- Basic Life Support (BLS)
- Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS)
- Ventilator Care
- Defibrillation
- Intravenous Therapy
- Telemetry
- Intensive Care Unit Nursing Skills
- Electronic Health Records
- Registered Nurse Skills
Patient and Family Interaction
One of the key Nurse Practitioner skills is the ability to provide patient-centered care. This involves ensuring patient safety in the healthcare setting, performing infection control, and providing compassionate support to patients and their families. It is also essential to emphasize strong communication skills and your ability to explain medical concepts in an easy-to-understand manner. Empathy and effective communication are the key soft skills for the nursing profession, so make sure that your resume reflects these traits.
Here are the skills essential to foster trust, build rapport, and enhance patient outcomes:
- Patient and Family Education
- Compassion and Empathy
- Infection Control
- Patient Care
- Communication Skills
Technical and Administrative Skills
The nursing field requires vast technical knowledge and rapidly evolves. In addition to clinical skills that relate to your direct duties of patient care, you should emphasize the ability to manage care plans, navigate electronic records, and manage EMR charting. Plus, mention your ability to follow hospital plans and procedures, or set your own if the job entails it. Thus, you will show your ability to perform nursing tasks at the highest level and contribute to the positive patient experience.
Employers value nurses who can integrate technology and administrative tasks into their practice and contribute to the overall clinic's or hospital's efficiency. Here are some valuable technical skills for your nursing resume:
- Charting on the Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
- EHR Proficiency
- Recruiting and Hiring Nurses
- Computer Skills
- Medical Billing and Coding
- Care Plan Administration
- Quality Improvement
- Patient Safety Protocols
Leadership Skills
If you displayed strong leadership skills in your previous role, it can give you a competitive edge over other nurses. Leadership is a valuable competency for registered nurses, as it shows the ability to motivate others, work effectively with other medical professionals, and create a productive work environment.
Leadership skills assume training nursing assistants, leading nursing teams, or replacing the charge nurse when necessary. However, they also mean that you can build strong relationships, manage your time, and offer insights and guidance to others. Make your nursing resume stand out with these leadership competencies:
- Teamwork and Dependability
- Leadership Abilities
- Conflict Resolution
- Collaboration with Healthcare Professionals
- Problem Solving
Soft Skills
Soft skills describe your workplace competencies and how you approach your tasks. As nurses extensively communicate with patients and physicians and navigate complex situations, having advanced soft skills is essential. Your resume should emphasize your ability to connect with others, critical thinking, stress management, and problem-solving while maintaining a high level of professionalism. Be sure to highlight these skills to show your commitment to providing compassionate and efficient care.
Here are the top nursing skills that signal your ability to work effectively with colleagues and patients and adapt to challenging situations:
- Interpersonal Skills
- Critical Thinking Skills
- Time Management and Stamina
- Ethics and Confidentiality
- Attention to Detail
- Continuous Learning
- Stress Management
Have you found the skills that best describe your experience? Now, let's see how to display those skills on your resume to make the hiring manager take notice.
Did you know that adding the right skills can increase your employability? Learn how to add skills to your resume and cover letter to boost your chances for an interview.
How to list RN skills on your resume effectively?
Identifying your skills and strengths is only half the success. Here's how to effectively add them to your nursing resume.
Research the facility and the position
Before you add any nursing skills to your resume, learn more about the hospital, clinic, or outpatient setting you'd like to work for. Get to know their values, requirements, and qualities they value in employees. This will help you effectively adjust the resume content.
Align the resume with the job description
Read the job posting to understand what qualifications are required for the role, and emphasize them in the first place. Decide what hard and soft skills to include based on the job requirements and the organization's values. By adding key skills to your resume, you'll pass the applicant tracking system (ATS) and increase your chance for consideration.
Focus on the top 6-14 nursing skills
Even if you're a senior RN with years of experience, no need to include all your skills. Focus on the most relevant skills and competencies that make you an asset for the target role. Ask yourself, "What makes me a valuable candidate and distinguishes me from other applicants?". Be sure to focus on the required qualifications first and then add the recommended ones.
Use a mix of hard skills and soft skills
Don't include only technical skills or soft skills, as you want to create a holistic impression about you as a candidate. Hard skills are your clinical nursing skills, such as BLS, monitoring vital signs, or IV skills. Soft skills refer to your workplace behavior and attitude. Use both types of skills to show that you will thrive in the healthcare environment if hired.
Remove the less important skills
As you grow professionally and move through the ranks, cut off the obvious skills, such as time management, BLS, communication skills, or computer competencies. These skills are nice to have for nursing students. However, for senior professionals, it is best to focus on narrow nursing competencies or familiarity with specialized equipment.
It is helpful to add relevant profiles to your LinkedIn profile as well to help recruiters find you online and strengthen your professional image. We have a super detailed guide on how to update your LinkedIn profile for a successful job search - read it and make your profile shine!
3 Strategies to describe skills on your nursing resume
Now, let's see how exactly to put your nursing skills on a resume:
1. Add the dedicated Skills section
Create a dedicated Skills section and list your nursing competencies as a bulleted list. If you are using a combination resume format, place your skills right after the career summary.
Here's what the Skills section can look like in a Registered Nurse resume:
- IV and Medication administration
- Patient and family education
- Critical thinking
- Patient safety
- Communication skills
- Direct patient care
- Care plan development
- Empathy
- EHR proficiency
2. Mention them on your resume summary
To highlight your most important hard or transferable skills, feature them in your resume summary. Focus on 2-3 skills you can prove with examples, and make sure they are highly relevant to the nursing position you have in mind. Here's an example:
Compassionate Registered Nurse with 3+ years of experience providing direct care to pediatric patients in a fast-paced hospital setting. Proven ability to quickly access patients and cooperate with physicians to implement the treatment plan. Capable of building a strong rapport with children and families and providing sensitive education on health conditions.
3. Speak through examples
Adding a nursing skill list helps you quickly capture the recruiter's attention. However, you also want to show where you used those skills in your daily work and what results you achieved. In other words, you need to present both skills and your clinical expertise.
Mention your skills when describing your healthcare experience. Give numbers and percentages to back up your statements, if possible.
Here's how you can show leadership skills with examples:
- Led a team initiative to streamline medication administration, which reduced the average medication delivery by 5 minutes per patient
- Instructed the nursing team on the new patient care procedures, resulting in a 15% increase in patient satisfaction
- Developed a new patient education resource for patients with asthma, leading to a 45% improvement in patient understanding of their treatment plan.
Writing a competitive RN resume: What else to include
Make sure that your RN skills shine through all sections of your resume! Highlight your skills, clinical expertise, and relevant education in every section of your resume:
Career Summary
Your Summary section goes after your name and contact info. In this section, you summarize your strengths and achievements in healthcare to catch the employer's attention. Think of it as a written elevator pitch. The summary should be 2-4 sentences long, and its purpose is to introduce yourself and encourage the recruiter to read your resume completely.
If you're still in a nursing school with not much experience, capitalize on your clinical rotations, voluntary work, and research work in nursing. It will also help to outline your professional goals so that the hospital can see you as a good fit.
Example:
Motivated and compassionate Pediatric Nurse Student with strong clinical skills, including patient assessment, medication administration, and vital sign monitoring. Can communicate effectively with children and families, creating a safe and comforting environment while implementing treatment plans. Eager to contribute to a team environment and provide high-quality care to patients.
Education
To become a successful nurse, you need extensive educational background. Nurses need at least a Bachelor's degree in Nursing, followed by a complex NCLEX-RN exam to become a Registered Nurse. Next, you need a state licensure to practice nursing. Make sure that your resume reflects all this information.
Here's what else you can add to your Education section:
- Academic achievements - as a recent graduate, you can add a high GPA and other academic honors to impress prospective employers.
- Relevant certifications - continuous learning is always welcomed by employers. If you have an ACLS, PLS, or CENP certification, list them under your degree.
Work experience
This section is to provide highlights of your nursing career. Professional experience is the main asset of your nursing resume, so keep it concise, relevant, and achievement-driven. Here's how to make the most out of your Professional Experience section:
- If you have extensive nursing experience, focus on 3-5 most recent positions and mention the previous ones briefly. For each role, write between 5 and 7 bullets about your responsibilities and achievements. Choose jobs that can demonstrate various nursing experiences in different types of settings.
- Mention any specialized equipment, skills, and software proficiency, as it can increase your chance of an interview.
- Avoid duplicating information. If you've worked as an intensive care nurse in many hospitals, you probably had similar responsibilities. Focus on what made each role unique to get the prospective employer interested.
- If you were promoted, mention this along with your achievements.
Language proficiency
It is beneficial for nurses to know foreign languages. Proficiency in a second or third language fosters clear, effective communication between patients and multicultural nursing teams. If you know German, Spanish, or Chinese, specify it on your resume and mention your level of proficiency.
Have an expert proofread your nursing resume
By adding the above-listed skills, you will communicate your strengths effectively to employers, pass the ATS screening, and position yourself as a good candidate. However, it is always helpful to have a resume expert review your application before sending it. Thus, you will avoid occasional mistakes and ensure that your resume makes the best possible impression.
At ResumePerk, we can edit and proofread your resume in less than 24 hours. A resume writer will fix any shortcomings in your document to help you land more interviews. Chat with us to get your welcome discount!
Frequently Asked Questions about Nursing Resume Skills
What are the hard skills for a nurse?
Hard skills are the specific abilities and skill set that can be measured and quantified. For nurses, hard skills refer to clinical skills and technical proficiencies that enable them to perform essential nursing duties. Nursing hard skills include medication administration, EHR management, medical technology, IV skills, taking vital signs, and more. You can learn the hard skills in medical school, at work, or by taking additional training.
What are the main nursing skills?
Essential skills for nurses include both hard skills (the ones that refer to technical nursing competencies and knowledge) and soft skills (personal attributes that describe our approach to work and how we interact with others in the workplace). Critical thinking, problem-solving, patient care, medication administration, interpersonal skills, empathy, and basic life support are among the must-have skills for any nurse.
How do I make my nursing resume stand out?
To write an interview-winning nursing resume, you need to adjust the resume content to the target job. Be sure to spotlight the specific skills and competencies the job description requires, and give examples of how you addressed similar challenges in the past.
Ideally, your nursing resume should be 1-2 pages long, depending on how much experience you have, and be professionally formatted. If you need help identifying if your resume presents your skills and competencies effectively, send it to us for a FREE review.