Considering a career in nursing?
Great! This guide will help you see if you have what it takes to become a successful nurse.
Already a nurse looking for a job?
Lovely! We’ll show you how to give your nursing skills a proper treatment on your resume.
This article will show you:
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Here’s the thing:
It’s not enough to simply have the best nursing skills—
You need to put them in the spotlight on your nursing resume.
Here’s a list of popular nursing resume skills for you to consider:
When selecting the right nursing skills for your resume, it’s crucial to focus on the skills characteristic of your specialization.
Take a look at the specialized clinical nursing skills checklist below to pick out your strongest nursing resume skills:
Visit our ICU Nurse Resume Writing Guide for more examples of intensive care unit nursing skills and step-by-step instructions on how to write a resume.
Check out our CNA Resume Writing Guide to see more examples of CNA nursing resume skills.
Take a look at our ER Nurse Resume Writing Guide for a comprehensive list of ER nursing resume skills.
Our Med-Surg Nurse Resume Writing Guide will not only show you how to make a job winning resume but also offer a detailed Med-Surg nursing resume skills list.
Go to our Pediatric Nurse Resume Writing Guide to explore more examples of pediatric nursing skills for a resume.
In our Labor and Delivery Nurse Resume Writing Guide, you can see more examples of nursing skills for labor and delivery nurses.
Read our LPN Resume Writing Guide for even more LPN nursing resume skills and a detailed guide on how to write an LPN resume.
Looking for more information on practical nursing resume skills? Check out our nursing resume writing guides for different nursing specializations:
Once you’ve decided which nursing skills are the ones you’d like to show off on your resume, you’ll have to make sure they truly stand out.
Remember—
To a hiring manager, you’re just a sheet of paper in a huge heap.
The best way to get a job is to make sure your resume screams you’re the best right in the recruiter’s face.
How to make sure your nursing skills are highlighted on your resume?
Tailor your resume to the job description.
Here’s how:
Before we move on, realize this:
More and more American healthcare institutions rely on the so-called ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) for recruitment purposes.
Why?
Because job offers attract hundreds of candidates, it's extremely hard for hiring managers to get to the resumes that actually meet the position requirements.
If you don’t want your application to go straight to the rejected folder, you need to make sure you use the right resume keywords to describe your nursing skills for a resume.
How to identify these keywords?
Revisit the job offer and describe your experience and nursing resume skills using the phrases you find there.
For example, your nursing assistant resume skills could be presented like this:
This way, you can be sure the relevant keywords are included, and you’ve presented exactly the nursing skills the employer is searching.
But—
You can do even more to give your nursing skills maximum exposure on a resume.
Cherry-pick up to three of your achievements you can quantify and you take pride in and put them in a separate key achievements subsection:
If you single out your biggest wins like this, you can be sure your best intensive care unit nursing skills won’t go unnoticed.
Finally—
Put your strongest nursing skills in a dedicated key skills section to draw the recruiter’s attention to your strongest side. The trick is not to populate the section with random nursing skills.
Pick out the clinical nursing skills and techniques that you excel at. Plus, look back at your job description section to pick out the skills you’d really like to show off.
Pro Tip: Select up to 10 key nursing skills to put in your resume’s key skills section. And go for the ones you have a very strong grasp of to avoid Presenter’s Paradox.
And one more thing.
You can also use the objective of a nurse resume to present your nursing skills.
Here’s what it could look like:
Compassionate and adaptable Registered Nurse with 10+ years of experience in high patient turnover hospital units. Eager to support the Hospital of St John the Baptist with superb organizational and ER nursing skills. In the previous role managed a team of 5 ER nurses in an 18-bed Level-2 Emergency Room.
The resume summary example above proves you can pepper your entire registered nurse resume with relevant nursing skills and sought-after character traits of a nurse. Make sure you put every square inch of your resume to good use and demonstrate your nursing expertise.
And yes, there are more things that can go on a resume:
Not sure how to go about writing your job-winning resume? Here’s a guide to get you on the right track: How to Make a Resume for a Job: from Application to Interview in 24h
Or maybe you’re a nursing student struggling with getting their resume right? Don’t worry and head straight to our guide: Nursing Student Resume Template & Guide for New Grads
When making a resume in our builder, drag & drop bullet points, skills, and auto-fill the boring stuff. Spell check? Check. Start building a professional resume template here for free.
When you’re done, Zety’s resume builder will score your resume and tell you exactly how to make it better.
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It should come as no surprise:
Nursing jobs require you to display a wide array of hard skills, ranging from the knowledge of clinical nursing skills and technical skills to various soft skills. Make sure to highlight your soft skills vs hard skills when applying for your next nursing job.
Some of the most popular nursing clinical skills cover such areas as:
As your nursing career progresses, you’ll come to focus on a particular set of technical nursing skills relevant to your specialization such as ICU nursing skills, or urology nursing skills.
In fact, each nursing profession has its own dedicated nursing skills checklist.
Undeniably, the best nurses are true masters of their craft but—
They also share certain skills and character traits you’ll hardly find on any list of skills required for nursing.
Here’s a list of 12 basic nursing skills:
Let’s take a closer look at each of them:
In nursing jobs, more than anywhere else, effective communication skills and active listening skills are vital.
Most of the time you’ll be dealing with the people and patient's family members who aren’t at their best. Your patients could be grumpy, irritated, spiteful, uncooperative, worried, grieving, or in shock. You name it.
And even though you’ll never fully know what you can expect of them, they’ll always expect one thing of you, namely professionalism. And your professionalism will be judged by the way you communicate with others.
Your nursing communication skills are part of a larger skill set, namely interpersonal skills. Keep developing them to become a master communicator.
Critical thinking skills always come in handy in dynamic situations with lots of variables. Like deciding on the best course of treatment for your patients.
Nurses must be able to think on their feet, weigh in pros and cons, and make informed choices with the patient’s life at the back of their minds. Critical thinking skills in nursing pertain to many different aspects of patient care. From administering medications to making conclusions about the patient’s condition based on the readouts to administering CPR when necessary.
Critical thinking skills consist of several interrelated abilities. You can develop your critical thinking skills in nursing by improving your analytical skills and conceptual skills.
It goes without saying, time-management skills in nursing are of the essence.
In fact, one study identified prioritization as one of the most crucial factors shaping patient experiences.
Ever-changing situations, issues calling for your immediate attention, large numbers of patients to take care of, and all this happening simultaneously. All these require you to be a master prioritizer, especially if you happen to be working in an emergency room.
It’s impossible to bilocate, but the ability to efficiently allocate your time will take you far. So make sure to keep working on your organizational skills.
It all starts with empathy.
You do need to have solid clinical nursing skills, but without empathy, you shouldn’t be really considering nursing as a career. The best nurses can relate to the feelings and pain a patient is going through, and channel their compassion constructively, not letting the negative emotions bring them down.
And truth be told, a compassionate nurse who cares is sometimes the only thing a patient needs to get better.
Nursing leadership skills are a crucial element of a nurse’s professional development.
Just remember, leadership is not about your seniority level. It’s about setting an example, inspiring people into action, building trust, and making others feel safe. This is why leadership and decision-making skills are important in nursing.
Strong work ethic has become a bit of a buzzword in modern business.
But the nursing profession is much more than business. It’s a mission. And work ethic is one of the essential nursing skills. A strong belief that your hard work serves the greater good and its value transcends hospital walls is fundamental to being a great nurse.
Nursing isn’t for the faint of heart. Nor is it for the careless.
Precision and attention to detail are the nursing skills that can mean the difference between a patient’s life or death. Simple as that.
If you’re unsure of your attentiveness, you can try doing several things to improve your attention to detail.
Acting and talking in a confident manner is a sign that you know what you’re doing. And it’s not only a crucial nursing skill. It’s also reassuring to the patients, their family members, co-workers, and other medical personnel.
Healthcare is not a solitary profession, you need to be sure you’re cooperating with a team of professionals. If someone isn’t sure of what they’re doing, the morale of the entire team might get undermined eventually. On the other hand, would you like to be catheterized by a nurse whose voice is faltering and hands are shaking?
Take your time and practice your leadership skills to gain confidence and take your nursing skills to new heights.
When you consider all the skills needed for nursing, adaptability mustn’t go unnoticed.
In fact, adaptability should be every nurse's middle name. Why? If there’s one thing that you could expect in your daily nursing work, it would be the unexpected.
In such circumstances, only the adaptable can thrive, which segues us into the last item on our nursing skills checklist:
Pro Tip: An iCIMS study identified adaptability as the second most desired skill by the employers. Also, adaptability is one of the most crucial employability skills.
Even though stamina comes last on our essential nursing skills list, it’s far from being the least important nursing skill.
Quite the opposite. Nursing work is both mentally and physically strenuous, without enough stamina no nurse would be able to go through their working day.
Want to find out what skills to put on a resume to boost your chances of landing a job? Here’s a guide just for you: 99 Key Skills for a Resume—Best List of Examples for All Types of Jobs
Plus, a great cover letter that matches your resume will give you an advantage over other candidates. You can write it in our cover letter builder here. Here's what it may look like:
See more cover letter templates and start writing.
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Here’s a list of recommended reads for all those who wish to grow professionally and develop their nursing skills:
Here’s a summary of all you need to know about nursing skills and how to describe them on your resume for nursing jobs:
Do you have any questions about nursing skills? Maybe you’d like to share some tips on how to develop them or show them on your resume. Give us a shout out in the comments below! We’d love to hear from you!
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