Top 12 Registered Nurse Skills to Put on Your Resume
Crafting a compelling resume is crucial for registered nurses aiming to showcase their expertise and stand out in the competitive healthcare landscape. A sharp, relevant skill set signals judgment, safety, and readiness. It also tells hiring managers you can hit the ground running, with fewer surprises and smoother handoffs.
Registered Nurse Skills
- Patient Assessment
- Wound Care
- IV Therapy
- Electronic Health Records (EHR)
- Basic Life Support (BLS)
- Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS)
- Medication Administration
- Patient Education
- Telemetry Monitoring
- Infection Control
- Epic Systems
- Cerner Millennium
1. Patient Assessment
Patient assessment is the systematic collection and interpretation of data across physical, psychological, social, and cultural domains to identify needs, set priorities, plan care, and evaluate outcomes.
Why It's Important
Everything flows from an accurate assessment. Sound data guides diagnoses, flags risks early, and keeps interventions targeted and safe. Miss something, and the plan wobbles.
How to Improve Patient Assessment Skills
Tune your observation: Notice patterns, not just numbers—respiratory effort, skin tone, behavior shifts, pain expressions.
Sharpen communication: Open-ended questions, therapeutic silence, and culturally aware language uncover what vitals can’t.
Structure your approach: Use a consistent head-to-toe sequence and validated tools (e.g., pain scales, delirium screens) to reduce blind spots.
Document with intent: Time-stamp, trend, and be specific. Clear notes power safer handoffs and better decisions.
Think critically: Correlate assessment findings with pathophysiology. If it doesn’t fit, reassess.
Better data, better care. Simple as that—yet never simple in practice.
How to Display Patient Assessment Skills on Your Resume
2. Wound Care
Wound care covers assessment, cleansing, dressings, offloading, infection prevention, and patient coaching to promote timely, complication-free healing.
Why It's Important
Good technique curbs infection, controls exudate, reduces pain, and speeds closure. Poor technique does the opposite—and patients feel every misstep.
How to Improve Wound Care Skills
Assess precisely: Measure, stage when applicable, note tissue type, edges, exudate, odor, and periwound skin. Address systemic factors (nutrition, perfusion, glucose).
Clean smart: Gentle irrigation, sterile saline for most wounds, and strict aseptic technique to protect granulation tissue.
Match dressing to need: Moisture balance is king—absorb when heavy, hydrate when dry, protect fragile skin, and manage bioburden appropriately.
Monitor and pivot: Reassess on schedule. If a wound stalls or worsens, escalate: cultures, imaging, consults, or advanced therapies.
Educate relentlessly: Offloading, hygiene, signs of infection, nutrition, and adherence—patients carry half the plan.
How to Display Wound Care Skills on Your Resume
3. IV Therapy
IV therapy means delivering fluids, medications, blood products, or nutrition directly into the venous system while vigilantly guarding against infection and line complications.
Why It's Important
Direct access to the bloodstream buys speed and precision. In emergencies, it’s the difference between now and too late.
How to Improve IV Therapy Skills
Perfect asepsis: Hand hygiene, skin prep contact time, sterile supplies, and no shortcuts. Line safety starts here.
Choose the right device: Gauge, site, and catheter type should match therapy duration, osmolarity, and patient vein quality. Know when to escalate to a central line.
Cannulate confidently: Vein selection, angle control, and securement reduce infiltration and dislodgement.
Monitor like a hawk: Watch for infiltration, extravasation, phlebitis, occlusion, air, and infection. Act early; document thoroughly.
Educate the patient: What to report (pain, swelling, coolness, leaking), how to protect the site, and why alarms matter.
How to Display IV Therapy Skills on Your Resume
4. Electronic Health Records (EHR)
EHRs are digital, secure patient records that centralize data for care teams, enabling coordinated documentation, orders, results, and decision support.
Why It's Important
Fast access to accurate information saves time, prevents errors, and aligns teams. Interoperability smooths transitions. Good notes, safer care.
How to Improve Electronic Health Records (EHR) Skills
Streamline your workflow: Customize templates, favorites, SmartPhrases/SmartLists (or equivalents) to cut clicks and duplication.
Invest in training: Short, role-specific refreshers pay back daily. New features appear often—learn them.
Document with clarity: Objective, concise, and searchable. Use problem-oriented notes and consistent terminology.
Close feedback loops: Report usability snags and safety risks. Small build tweaks can remove big headaches.
Mind interoperability: Reconcile outside records, meds, and allergies carefully during transitions of care.
How to Display Electronic Health Records (EHR) Skills on Your Resume
5. Basic Life Support (BLS)
BLS is foundational emergency care: high-quality CPR, timely defibrillation with an AED, and relief of choking while awaiting advanced support.
Why It's Important
Early recognition and effective compressions change outcomes. Seconds count; technique counts more.
How to Improve Basic Life Support (BLS) Skills
Refresh on schedule: Recertify regularly and practice with feedback devices that coach compression depth and rate.
Drill with your team: Mock codes sharpen role clarity, choreography, and communication under pressure.
Focus on quality: Hard, fast, minimal interruptions, full recoil, correct ventilation. Measure, don’t guess.
Debrief and adjust: After real events or simulations, review what helped and what hindered—then change one thing immediately.
How to Display Basic Life Support (BLS) Skills on Your Resume
6. Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS)
ACLS builds on BLS with rhythm recognition, airway management, vasoactive medications, synchronized cardioversion/defibrillation, and post–cardiac arrest care—delivered as a tight team.
Why It's Important
Cardiac emergencies move fast. ACLS brings algorithms, precision, and coordination when the room gets loud.
How to Improve Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) Skills
Stay current: Review updates to resuscitation guidelines and incorporate changes into local protocols promptly.
Simulate complexity: Run scenario-based drills that layer airway challenges, rhythm changes, and medication timing.
Lead and follow: Practice both code leadership and task roles. Closed-loop communication keeps errors out.
Optimize post-ROSC care: Hemodynamics, ventilation targets, temperature management, and neuro checks—sustain the win.
How to Display Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) Skills on Your Resume
7. Medication Administration
Medication administration encompasses preparing, verifying, giving, and documenting medications safely across routes and settings while monitoring effects and adverse reactions.
Why It's Important
Accuracy here is nonnegotiable. Correct drug, dose, time, route, and patient—plus strong monitoring—keeps patients safe and therapies effective.
How to Improve Medication Administration Skills
Double down on verification: Use two patient identifiers, barcode scanning when available, and independent double-checks for high-alert meds.
Know the med: Indication, mechanism, onset/peak, contraindications, and key interactions. If the order doesn’t fit the picture, pause.
Expand the “rights”: Beyond the classic five, emphasize right documentation, right reason, and right response/evaluation.
Standardize risk points: Concentrated electrolytes, insulin, anticoagulants, opioids—use protocols and titration guides.
Engage the patient: Teach purpose and timing; invite questions. An informed patient is a backstop.
How to Display Medication Administration Skills on Your Resume
8. Patient Education
Patient education means translating clinical plans into plain, practical guidance that patients and families can understand, remember, and apply.
Why It's Important
When patients grasp the “why” and the “how,” adherence improves, complications drop, and confidence rises. Confusion is costly.
How to Improve Patient Education Skills
Assess first: Health literacy, language needs, culture, readiness, and preferred learning style shape your approach.
Use plain language: Short sentences, concrete words, one idea at a time. Jargon belongs in the chart, not the teaching.
Mix methods: Verbal coaching, one-page handouts, visuals, and demonstrations. Then practice together.
Teach-back: Ask patients to explain the plan in their own words. Gaps become visible—and fixable.
Reinforce and follow up: Summarize key points, confirm resources, and revisit at the next contact.
How to Display Patient Education Skills on Your Resume
9. Telemetry Monitoring
Telemetry monitoring tracks cardiac rhythms and vital signs continuously, streaming actionable data to the care team for timely intervention.
Why It's Important
Rhythm changes whisper before they shout. Continuous surveillance catches deterioration early and keeps alarms meaningful.
How to Improve Telemetry Monitoring Skills
Place leads correctly: Good skin prep and proper lead positioning reduce artifact and alarm fatigue.
Read the rhythms: Differentiate common arrhythmias, ischemic changes, and artifact quickly; confirm with a 12-lead when needed.
Validate alarms: Correlate with the patient—never treat the monitor alone. Adjust parameters to match clinical goals.
Communicate fast: Clear escalation paths and closed-loop updates keep responses tight and targeted.
Educate the patient: Explain restrictions, battery care, and why staying connected matters.
How to Display Telemetry Monitoring Skills on Your Resume
10. Infection Control
Infection control is the disciplined use of standard and transmission-based precautions, device care, cleaning, and vaccinations to block pathogen spread.
Why It's Important
It protects patients and staff, preserves bed capacity, and keeps preventable harm out of your unit. Small habits, big ripple effects.
How to Improve Infection Control Skills
Master hand hygiene: Alcohol-based rubs for routine use; soap and water when visibly soiled or with spore-formers.
Use PPE correctly: Right gear, right sequence—don, doff, and dispose without contaminating yourself or the room.
Target precautions: Apply contact, droplet, or airborne measures based on organism and clinical picture.
Clean thoroughly: High-touch surfaces, shared equipment, and device hubs need consistent, documented disinfection.
Protect with vaccines: Stay current to safeguard yourself and the patients you serve.
Audit and learn: Track compliance, investigate breaches, and close gaps quickly.
How to Display Infection Control Skills on Your Resume
11. Epic Systems
Epic Systems is a widely used EHR platform offering tools for documentation, orders, care coordination, analytics, and clinical decision support—features nurses touch all day, every day.
Why It's Important
Efficient use trims documentation time, tightens safety checks, and improves handoffs. The system becomes a force multiplier instead of friction.
How to Improve Epic Systems Skills
- Keep current: Attend periodic refreshers and release-note briefings so new workflows don’t pass you by.
- Personalize: Build favorites, SmartPhrases, and order sets that mirror your unit’s patterns.
- Go mobile when appropriate: Secure mobile apps can speed documentation and messaging at the bedside.
- Share what works: Swap tips with super users and your team; small tweaks compound.
- Protect data quality: Accurate allergies, med histories, and problem lists support safer care.
How to Display Epic Systems Skills on Your Resume
12. Cerner Millennium
Cerner Millennium—now part of Oracle Health (often referred to as Oracle Health Millennium)—integrates documentation, orders, results, and care coordination across settings to present a cohesive patient record.
Why It's Important
Streamlined documentation and coordinated data reduce duplication, support clinical decisions, and improve safety at transitions.
How to Improve Cerner Millennium Skills
Personalize the view: Configure components and shortcuts that match your unit’s rhythm and your role.
Leverage clinical decision support: Use alerts, guided documentation, and order sets thoughtfully to enhance safety without drowning in noise.
Strengthen teamwork: Standardize handoff notes, care plans, and messaging conventions for your unit.
Close the loop with IT: Report pain points; partner on fixes and quick wins that save clicks and cut errors.
Use mobile tools where enabled: Bedside access to charting and communication trims delays.
How to Display Cerner Millennium Skills on Your Resume
