Registered Nurse — Resume Example & ATS Keywords
Hospitals screen nursing resumes for certifications, units, and patient outcomes. State your license and specialties explicitly, and show scale: beds, patients per shift, protocols.
Professional summary example
Registered nurse (BSN, RN) with 6 years in acute care and a 28-bed medical-surgical unit. Maintained a 98% medication administration accuracy rate and precepted 11 new graduate nurses. Certified in BLS and ACLS, with Epic and Meditech documentation experience across two hospital systems.
Example bullet points
- Provided direct care for 6–8 med-surg patients per shift in a 320-bed hospital, maintaining 98% medication administration accuracy.
- Coordinated with a multidisciplinary team on discharge planning, cutting 30-day readmissions 15% on the unit.
- Trained 12 new nurses on EHR charting (Epic) and unit protocols, halving onboarding time.
- Implemented an hourly rounding protocol that raised patient satisfaction scores from 82% to 93%.
- Responded to rapid-response and code events as designated first responder on the night shift.
Writing tips for this role
- List license type, number/state, and certifications (BLS, ACLS) in a dedicated section — ATS filters screen for them first.
- Name your unit types (ICU, med-surg, ER) and EHR systems (Epic, Cerner) explicitly.
- Quantify care: patients per shift, bed count, satisfaction scores, error rates.
- Match the posting's exact terms — "patient education" and "care planning" are searched literally.
ATS keywords to include
Common questions
What belongs at the top of a nursing resume?
Licence and certifications — RN, BSN, BLS, ACLS — with the issuing state and expiry. Hospital screening systems look for them first, and a recruiter who cannot find your licence number will not hunt for it.
How do I quantify nursing work?
Patient ratios, bed counts, unit type and outcome rates. \"Managed a 6:1 patient load on a 28-bed med-surg unit\" tells a nurse manager far more than \"provided patient care\".
Does the same resume work for every hospital?
The body can stay, but mirror each posting's terms. One system writes \"telemetry\", another \"cardiac monitoring\"; the ATS matches literal strings, so use the words the posting uses when they are true of you.
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