Top 12 Nurse Technician Skills to Put on Your Resume
Healthcare is crowded and fast-moving. If you’re a nurse technician, your skills tell the story—how you care, how you think under pressure, how you keep people safe. Put the essentials front and center, and employers notice. The right mix on your resume can tilt the outcome in your favor.
Nurse Technician Skills
- Phlebotomy
- EKG Interpretation
- CPR Certified
- Patient Monitoring
- Wound Care
- Medication Administration
- Vital Signs
- Electronic Health Records (EHR)
- IV Insertion
- Patient Education
- Infection Control
- HIPAA Compliance
1. Phlebotomy
Phlebotomy is the collection of blood from a vein for testing or treatment. Nurse technicians often perform draws, label specimens, and ensure safe, clean handling from patient to lab.
Why It's Important
Accurate blood collection underpins diagnosis, medication dosing, and monitoring. Good technique protects patients from harm and preserves sample integrity.
How to Improve Phlebotomy Skills
Practice deliberately: Work under supervision, track first‑stick success, and focus on smooth, consistent technique.
Know your anatomy and order of draw: Choose sites wisely, prevent hemolysis, and label at bedside without fail.
Communicate and prepare: Explain, obtain consent, position comfortably, use warm compresses for tricky veins.
Asepsis and sharps safety: Clean for the right contact time, don and doff gloves properly, dispose of sharps immediately.
Use tools thoughtfully: Tourniquets, vein finders, smaller needles when appropriate—match the tool to the patient.
Seek feedback: Ask peers to observe and coach. Small adjustments change everything.
Refresh often: Skills labs, return demos, and competency checks keep the edges sharp.
How to Display Phlebotomy Skills on Your Resume
2. EKG Interpretation
EKG interpretation means reading the heart’s electrical rhythms—spotting what’s normal, what’s not, and what needs rapid escalation.
Why It's Important
Early recognition of dangerous rhythms saves lives. You become the eyes and ears that prompt timely action.
How to Improve EKG Interpretation Skills
Master foundations: Conduction system, P–QRS–T, intervals, axis, leads, artifact vs. signal.
Use a system every time: Rate, rhythm, intervals, axis, morphology, ST/T changes—no skipping steps.
Practice daily: Short bursts of strip review build pattern recognition quickly.
Memorize red flags: STEMI patterns, wide-complex tachy, heart block, torsades—know when to call immediately.
Learn with others: Compare reads with nurses and providers; debrief disagreements and refine.
Document precisely: Time stamps, lead placement notes, patient symptoms at capture.
How to Display EKG Interpretation Skills on Your Resume
3. CPR Certified
CPR certification confirms you can deliver high‑quality compressions, ventilations, and AED use during cardiac and respiratory arrest. In most roles, current BLS for Healthcare Providers is expected.
Why It's Important
In a crisis, seconds matter. Competent CPR doubles down on survival odds until advanced care takes over.
How to Improve CPR Certified Skills
Keep it current: Maintain BLS on time (typically every two years) and review updates to guidelines.
Train with feedback: Manikins that measure depth, recoil, and rate sharpen muscle memory.
Run mock codes: Practice roles, airway swaps, and defib timing; debrief ruthlessly.
Know your unit’s flow: Crash cart layout, code buttons, oxygen sources, post‑event documentation.
Protect yourself: PPE, bag‑mask seal technique, and safe scene setup.
How to Display CPR Certified Skills on Your Resume
4. Patient Monitoring
Patient monitoring means capturing vitals and clinical cues, recognizing trends, and alerting the team when something shifts.
Why It's Important
Subtle change can precede a crash. Good monitoring spots the drift early and steers care back on course.
How to Improve Patient Monitoring Skills
Get the technique right: Proper cuff size, positioning, quiet rest before measurement, manual rechecks when needed.
Know normals—and normals by age: Baselines matter; trends matter more.
Tame the alarms: Set appropriate limits, avoid alarm fatigue, escalate meaningful changes.
Use early warning scores: Calculate and report per policy to trigger rapid response early.
Care for equipment: Charge, calibrate, and clean. Faulty gear equals faulty data.
Document context: Time, position, activity, oxygen delivery—numbers need a story.
How to Display Patient Monitoring Skills on Your Resume
5. Wound Care
Wound care blends assessment, cleaning, dressing selection, and pressure relief to move tissue from injury to repair—safely and steadily.
Why It's Important
Good care prevents infection, reduces pain, and speeds closure. Poor care stalls healing and invites complications.
How to Improve Wound Care Skills
Assess systematically: Location, size, depth, tissue type, exudate, odor, periwound skin, pain. Stage pressure injuries per current guidance.
Use the right technique: Clean vs. sterile per policy. Adequate contact time for antiseptics. Gentle, consistent handling.
Think TIME: Tissue debridement needs, Infection/inflammation cues, Moisture balance, Edge advancement.
Choose smart dressings: Match to moisture and bioburden—foams, alginates, hydrofibers, films, hydrocolloids, silicone interfaces.
Offload and protect: Repositioning schedules, heel protectors, specialty surfaces.
Partner with experts: Learn from wound care nurses; escalate when healing stalls or infection signs bloom.
Teach the basics: Nutrition, hydration, smoking cessation, at‑home dressing care—reinforce what the RN educates.
How to Display Wound Care Skills on Your Resume
6. Medication Administration
Medication administration involves giving the right drug, dose, route, and timing—safely and precisely. Scope varies by state and facility; many nurse technicians do not administer medications and instead support RNs with preparation, verification, and monitoring. Always follow your organization’s policies and your defined scope.
Why It's Important
When permitted, accurate administration prevents harm and drives therapeutic results. When not permitted, vigilant support still catches errors before they reach the patient.
How to Improve Medication Administration Skills
Live the “rights”: Right patient, medication, dose, route, time—plus right documentation, indication, and response.
Use technology: Barcoding and eMAR reduce error—scan every time, avoid workarounds.
Double‑check high‑alert meds: Independent verification with a second clinician.
Clarify orders: Read-back for verbal orders, question illegible or ambiguous entries.
Watch for interactions and allergies: Verify history, note labs that change dosing, record reactions promptly.
Control the environment: Minimize interruptions during preparation and administration.
Know your scope: If not authorized to administer, assist by preparing supplies, verifying identifiers, and monitoring for effects.
How to Display Medication Administration Skills on Your Resume
7. Vital Signs
Vital signs capture core physiology: temperature, pulse, respirations, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation—often with pain and level of consciousness for context.
Why It's Important
They’re the earliest clues. A quiet shift in numbers can herald big trouble.
How to Improve Vital Signs Skills
Measure correctly: Right cuff, correct site, patient at rest, feet flat, arm at heart level, no talking.
Verify abnormals: Recheck manually, change limbs, and confirm technique before escalating.
Count respirations discreetly: Observe chest or waveform without tipping off the patient.
Know device limits: Pulse ox struggles with cold fingers, motion, nail polish, poor perfusion—use clinical judgment.
Trend, don’t just snapshot: Compare to baseline and previous readings; document position and oxygen settings.
Escalate fast: Use SBAR, include new symptoms, and record the time you notified.
How to Display Vital Signs Skills on Your Resume
8. Electronic Health Records (EHR)
EHRs organize histories, meds, orders, notes, images, labs—everything in one place. They’re the backbone of coordinated care.
Why It's Important
Fast access to accurate data drives better decisions and fewer errors. Documentation becomes clear, trackable, and shareable across the team.
How to Improve Electronic Health Records (EHR) Skills
Train with purpose: Learn shortcuts, smart phrases, and templates specific to your workflows.
Customize views: Surface the flowsheets and dashboards you touch most; hide the noise.
Protect privacy: Minimum necessary access, strong passwords, lock screens, no casual hallway talk about PHI.
Document cleanly: Avoid copy‑paste traps; chart what you observed, when you observed it.
Close the loop: Use tasks and flags for handoffs, reconcile meds carefully, and follow downtime procedures when systems hiccup.
How to Display Electronic Health Records (EHR) Skills on Your Resume
9. IV Insertion
IV insertion places a catheter into a vein to deliver fluids, meds, or blood products. Many facilities limit this to RNs; some permit trained technicians. Follow your scope and unit policy.
Why It's Important
Reliable access enables rapid therapy. When time is thin, a well‑placed IV changes outcomes.
How to Improve IV Insertion Skills
Prep the site properly: Antiseptic friction and dry time matter; don’t rush.
Choose wisely: Distal to proximal, straight segments, non‑flexion areas; smallest gauge that meets therapy needs.
Use sound mechanics: Anchor the vein, low angle of entry, bevel up, watch for flash, advance the catheter smoothly.
Secure and protect: Release tourniquet before flushing, apply chevron or stabilization device, transparent dressing.
Limit attempts: Know the cap per policy; escalate early, consider ultrasound‑guided help if available and trained.
Monitor the line: Check for infiltration, extravasation, and phlebitis; respond quickly if complications arise.
How to Display IV Insertion Skills on Your Resume
10. Patient Education
Patient education means translating health information into plain English, reinforcing the RN’s teaching, and helping patients and families carry out the plan at home.
Why It's Important
Understanding fuels adherence. Adherence drives outcomes. Patients feel safer, too.
How to Improve Patient Education Skills
Assess literacy and barriers: Ask what they know, how they learn best, and what gets in the way.
Use teach‑back: “Can you show me how you’d do this at home?” Close gaps on the spot.
Chunk and check: Small pieces, simple words, visuals and demos where possible.
Be culturally aware: Use interpreters, respect preferences, tailor examples to daily life.
Send supports home: Clear written steps, when‑to‑call lists, and phone numbers for help.
Document thoroughly: What you taught, patient response, and follow‑up needs.
How to Display Patient Education Skills on Your Resume
11. Infection Control
Infection control covers the practices that block transmission—hand hygiene, PPE, cleaning, safe injections, and isolation procedures.
Why It's Important
It shields patients, coworkers, and you. Outbreaks are costly and dangerous; prevention is the quiet victory.
How to Improve Infection Control Skills
Hand hygiene every time: Before and after patient contact, after body fluid exposure, before aseptic tasks, after touching surroundings.
PPE done right: Correct don and doff sequence, fit checks for masks, change gloves between tasks.
Clean and disinfect: High‑touch surfaces and shared equipment on schedule and after use.
Follow isolation signs: Standard, contact, droplet, airborne—know the differences and comply.
Sharps safety: No recapping, point‑of‑use disposal, and immediate reporting of exposures.
Stay current: Vaccinations, symptom monitoring, and staying home when ill.
How to Display Infection Control Skills on Your Resume
12. HIPAA Compliance
HIPAA compliance means protecting patient privacy and securing health information—paper, spoken, or electronic—at all times.
Why It's Important
Trust and safety ride on confidentiality. Breaches hurt patients and organizations alike.
How to Improve HIPAA Compliance Skills
Minimum necessary: Access and share only what your role requires.
Verify identity: Before discussing or releasing information, confirm who’s asking.
Secure the tech: Strong passwords, two‑factor authentication, locked screens, no PHI on personal devices.
Be discreet: Private spaces for sensitive conversations; avoid public chatter.
Paper discipline: Clean‑desk habits, shred bins for disposal, no unattended charts.
Report quickly: Suspected breaches, misdirected faxes, or lost devices—notify your privacy contact immediately.
How to Display HIPAA Compliance Skills on Your Resume
