Top 12 Health Professional Skills to Put on Your Resume
In a crowded healthcare job market, a resume that actually signals value beats a generic list every time. Show the skills that move needles: safer care, smoother workflows, sharper decisions. Let those strengths surface fast, and your candidacy starts to breathe.
Health Professional Skills
- Patient Care
- EMR (Electronic Medical Records)
- CPR Certified
- Phlebotomy
- HIPAA Compliance
- Telehealth Proficiency
- Cerner
- Epic Systems
- Medical Coding (ICD-10)
- ACLS (Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support)
- Triage
- EKG Interpretation
1. Patient Care
Patient care means delivering safe, compassionate, evidence-based support that preserves dignity and drives better outcomes. It’s the day-to-day craft of easing pain, preventing harm, and helping people heal.
Why It's Important
Great care changes trajectories. It builds trust, reduces complications, and lifts satisfaction. Small choices—explaining plainly, checking understanding, coordinating tightly—compound into measurable results.
How to Improve Patient Care Skills
Communication that lands: Listen without rushing. Explain in everyday language. Confirm understanding with teach-back.
Empathy on purpose: Acknowledge fears and frustrations. Validate, then guide. Calm is contagious.
Stay current: Keep up with clinical guidance and quality-improvement insights. Make evidence your default.
Shared decisions: Invite preferences, outline options, discuss risks and trade-offs. Personalize plans.
Smart tech use: Document clearly, reconcile meds, close loops on results. Reduce friction, not humanity.
Team choreography: Huddles, closed-loop communication, clear roles. Coordination prevents misses.
Consistent habits here make care safer and kinder.
How to Display Patient Care Skills on Your Resume
2. EMR (Electronic Medical Records)
EMR systems are digital charts within a practice—clinical histories, meds, labs, notes—organized for fast, accurate care. (Many workplaces now use broader EHRs that share data across organizations.)
Why It's Important
Clean, timely documentation sharpens decisions and reduces errors. Access to the right data at the right moment keeps teams aligned and patients safer.
How to Improve EMR (Electronic Medical Records) Skills
Usability first: Customize templates, favorites, and order sets. Fewer clicks, fewer slips.
Data hygiene: Reconcile meds, problem lists, allergies. Close care gaps. Trustworthy charts save time later.
Interoperability awareness: Learn how your system exchanges data (e.g., FHIR, CCD). Pull and push info reliably across sites.
Patient access tools: Encourage portal use, secure messaging, and results review with clear guidance.
Ongoing training: New features roll out often. Short refreshers prevent bad habits from sticking.
Less clutter. More clarity. Better care.
How to Display EMR (Electronic Medical Records) Skills on Your Resume
3. CPR Certified
CPR certification confirms proficiency in recognizing cardiac arrest, delivering compressions and ventilations, and using an AED. When seconds matter, skill beats guesswork.
Why It's Important
Early, effective CPR doubles or triples survival in out-of-hospital arrests and stabilizes in-hospital collapses until advanced care takes over.
How to Improve CPR Certified Skills
Keep guidelines fresh: Review updates regularly; best practices evolve.
Drill the basics: High-quality compressions, minimal pauses, quick AED deployment. Muscle memory wins.
Advance your scope: Add ACLS or PALS to refine airway, rhythm, and medication management.
Simulation reps: Practice high-stress scenarios with feedback devices for rate and depth.
Recert on time: Refresh every two years (or sooner if skills feel rusty).
Confidence comes from recent, repeated practice.
How to Display CPR Certified Skills on Your Resume
4. Phlebotomy
Phlebotomy is the art and science of drawing blood safely, preserving sample integrity, and reassuring the person on the other end of the needle.
Why It's Important
Accurate diagnosis depends on reliable specimens. One calm, precise stick can prevent redraws, delays, and avoidable pain.
How to Improve Phlebotomy Skills
Technique refinement: Master vein selection, angle, and stabilization. Practice on task trainers before complex sticks.
Infection control: Hand hygiene, PPE, site prep, secure sharps disposal—every time.
Order of draw and labeling: Reduce hemolysis and contamination; label at bedside without fail.
Patient rapport: Explain steps, set expectations, distract and comfort. Anxiety drops, success rises.
Feedback loop: Track miss rates, hemolysis incidents, and near misses; adjust technique accordingly.
Quiet hands, clear process, cleaner results.
How to Display Phlebotomy Skills on Your Resume
5. HIPAA Compliance
HIPAA compliance means safeguarding protected health information—paper, spoken, or digital—through policy, training, and technical controls aligned with the law.
Why It's Important
Privacy builds trust. Proper safeguards prevent breaches, penalties, and reputational damage, and most importantly protect patients.
How to Improve HIPAA Compliance Skills
Risk assessment cadence: Identify threats, rank them, close gaps. Repeat on a schedule and after changes.
Clear policies: Document who can access what, when, and how. Make procedures easy to find and follow.
Train everyone: Onboarding plus periodic refreshers. Phishing drills. Role-based scenarios.
Technical safeguards: Encryption, MFA, least-privilege access, audit logs, timed lockouts.
Business associate rigor: Execute agreements, verify controls, monitor performance.
Breach playbook: Define reporting steps, timelines, and notification workflows. Practice the plan.
Update habit: Monitor regulatory changes and tune policies accordingly.
Security is a process, not a one-time project.
How to Display HIPAA Compliance Skills on Your Resume
6. Telehealth Proficiency
Telehealth proficiency blends clinical skill with camera-side manner and reliable tech, letting you evaluate, educate, and follow up without a waiting room.
Why It's Important
Access expands. No-shows shrink. Continuity holds even when travel or illness gets in the way.
How to Improve Telehealth Proficiency Skills
Platform fluency: Test connections, screen share, e-prescribe, and route orders smoothly. Have a Plan B if tech fails.
Policy literacy: Know privacy rules, consent requirements, documentation standards, and billing basics for your state and payer mix.
Virtual communication: Eye-line with the camera, clear audio, concise instructions, visual aids when helpful.
Clinical workflows: Define which conditions fit virtual care, escalation paths, and when to convert to in-person.
Feedback loop: Patient surveys and peer review reveal friction points you can fix fast.
When telehealth feels effortless, patients notice.
How to Display Telehealth Proficiency Skills on Your Resume
7. Cerner
Cerner—now part of Oracle Health—delivers EHR tools for documentation, orders, results, population health, and analytics. Many hospitals still refer to it simply as “Cerner.”
Why It's Important
Proficiency speeds documentation, tightens medication safety, and surfaces insights that prevent problems before they bite.
How to Improve Cerner Skills
Personalize: Build favorites, quick orders, and note templates that match your flow.
Learn the shortcuts: Smart tools, auto-text, order sets—less typing, fewer clicks.
Stay updated: New releases add features and fix pain points. Skim release notes and try them.
Use reports: Dashboards and analytics can highlight care gaps and throughput issues.
Ask the super users: Local experts know the quirks and the hidden gems.
The system should serve the clinician, not the other way around.
How to Display Cerner Skills on Your Resume
8. Epic Systems
Epic is a comprehensive EHR platform spanning inpatient, outpatient, revenue cycle, and patient engagement. It’s widely adopted, deeply configurable, and feature-dense.
Why It's Important
Strong Epic users document faster, communicate clearer, and coordinate care across services with fewer handoff errors.
How to Improve Epic Systems Skills
Role-based training: Seek modules tailored to your specialty. Practice in a sandbox before go-live changes.
Smart tools: Leverage SmartPhrases, SmartTexts, and SmartLists to standardize quality documentation.
In Basket mastery: Create filters, quick actions, and message templates to tame the flood.
Reporting and analytics: Build simple reports to track panel metrics, turnaround times, and care gaps.
Peer tips: Join user groups or local councils to trade workflows that actually work.
Small tweaks compound into hours saved each week.
How to Display Epic Systems Skills on Your Resume
9. Medical Coding (ICD-10)
ICD-10-CM/PCS provides standardized codes for diagnoses and procedures. Clean coding supports accurate records, fair reimbursement, and meaningful analytics.
Why It's Important
Specific codes tell the clinical story. They inform risk adjustment, quality metrics, and research—while preventing denials.
How to Improve Medical Coding (ICD-10) Skills
Stay current: U.S. updates typically take effect each October 1. Review annual changes.
Document to specificity: Laterality, acuity, staging, complications—details matter for the right code.
Crosswalk savvy: Understand links with CPT/HCPCS and common payer policies.
Practice cases: Work through scenarios and compare results with expert rationales.
Community input: Discuss tricky cases with coding or CDI colleagues to resolve gray zones.
Use tools wisely: Encoder support helps, but verify with clinical documentation.
Better documentation begets better coding. In that order.
How to Display Medical Coding (ICD-10) Skills on Your Resume
10. ACLS (Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support)
ACLS equips clinicians to manage cardiac and neurologic emergencies: rhythm recognition, defibrillation, airway strategies, and time-critical medications—delivered as a coordinated team.
Why It's Important
In those tight minutes, fluent algorithms and crisp teamwork tilt outcomes in the right direction.
How to Improve ACLS (Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support) Skills
Refresh the algorithms: Keep reversible causes and drug dosing at your fingertips.
Run mock codes: Practice leadership, role clarity, and closed-loop communication under pressure.
Hands-on airway practice: Bag-mask seal, adjuncts, and escalation plans; intubation where within scope.
Debrief relentlessly: After simulations or real events, review what helped and what hindered.
Renew on schedule: Maintain certification and integrate any focused updates.
Calm, practiced teams save lives.
How to Display ACLS (Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support) Skills on Your Resume
11. Triage
Triage assigns priority based on severity and resource needs so the sickest are treated first and throughput doesn’t stall.
Why It's Important
Good triage prevents dangerous delays, right-sizes response, and steadies crowded settings.
How to Improve Triage Skills
Standardize: Use a validated scale (e.g., ESI, CTAS) and apply it consistently.
Rapid assessment: Vital signs, red flags, and chief complaint synthesis within minutes.
Decision support: Leverage protocols and checklists to reduce variability.
Communication: Brief, precise handoffs and clear instructions to patients and teams.
Quality review: Audit under- and over-triage, then recalibrate with coaching.
Special populations: Pediatric, obstetric, and behavioral health nuances require tailored cues.
Fast, fair, and evidence-based—every shift.
How to Display Triage Skills on Your Resume
12. EKG Interpretation
EKG interpretation decodes cardiac electrical activity to spot rhythm disturbances, ischemia, conduction delays, and more. It’s a core diagnostic lens in acute and chronic care.
Why It's Important
Timely reads change management now—thrombolytics or cath, pacing or meds, watchful waiting or workup.
How to Improve EKG Interpretation Skills
Structured approach: Rate, rhythm, axis, intervals, morphology, ischemia. Same order, every time.
Pattern reps: See hundreds of tracings—normal variants, bundle blocks, SVT flavors, STEMI and mimics.
12‑lead mastery: Localize infarcts, recognize reciprocal changes, and link leads to anatomy.
Clinical context: Read the patient, not just the paper. Electrolytes, meds, history shape interpretation.
Peer review: Discuss tough strips and correlate with echo, troponin, or outcomes when available.
Feedback: Track misses and near misses; refine your mental checklists.
Deliberate practice turns squiggles into signals.
How to Display EKG Interpretation Skills on Your Resume
