Palliative Care Nurse Resume Example & Writing Guide
Use this Palliative Care Nurse resume example and guide to improve your career and write a powerful resume that will separate you from the competition.
Palliative care nurses are highly specialized nurses who provide comfort and support to people living with life-limiting illnesses. Working closely with patients, families, and other healthcare providers, palliative care nurses help patients manage pain and symptoms, coordinate care across different health professionals, and provide emotional support.
While the role of palliative care nurses is very specific, there are many unique aspects to this field. Some nurses work in private practice or in a hospital setting, while others work in home health or hospice care. Some palliative care nurses focus primarily on end-of-life care, while others may focus on chronic or acute illness management.
Because of the wide range of responsibilities and settings in which palliative care nurses work, resume tips and an example will help you write your own compelling palliative care nurse resume that hiring managers will love.
How to Write a Palliative Care Nurse Resume
Here’s how to write a resume of your own.
Write Compelling Bullet Points
When you’re writing your bullet points, it can be tempting to simply list your responsibilities. But that’s not enough to make a strong impression. Instead, you should use your bullet points to demonstrate your value by using specific examples and metrics.
For example, rather than saying you “provided end-of-life care for terminally ill patients,” you could say you “provided end-of-life care for 15 terminally ill patients, resulting in a 90% satisfaction rate among patients and their families.”
The second bullet point paints a much clearer picture of what the job entails. And it provides a specific number to demonstrate the level of care provided.
Identify and Include Relevant Keywords
When you apply for a palliative care nurse role, your resume will likely be scanned by an applicant tracking system (ATS) for certain keywords. These systems look for terms related to palliative care like “end of life” and “hospice” in order to determine whether your skills are a match for the job opening. If your resume doesn’t include enough relevant keywords, your application might not make it past the initial screening process.
To increase your chances of getting an interview, use this list of common palliative care nurse keywords as a starting point:
- Palliative Care
- Nursing
- Hospice Care
- Patient Safety
- Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)
- Critical Care Nursing
- Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
- Healthcare
- Basic Life Support (BLS)
- Patient Education
- Acute Care
- Inpatient Care
- Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS)
- Oncology
- Clinical Research
- Pain Management
- Advanced Life Support (ALS)
- Medication Administration
- Home Care
- Patient Advocacy
- Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS)
- Adult Advanced Life Support (ACLS)
- Cardiology
- Cardiac Nursing
- Nursing Education
- Operating Room
- Informatics
- Critical Care Medicine
- Interventional Radiology
- Medicine
Showcase Your Technical Skills
As a palliative care nurse, you are responsible for providing care to patients who are dealing with a life-threatening illness. In order to effectively do your job, you need to be proficient in the use of technology. This might include experience with electronic health records (EHR) systems, patient monitoring systems, or medical devices.
Additionally, palliative care nurses need to be comfortable with using technology to communicate with other members of the healthcare team, including doctors and nurses. So if you have experience with any specific communication platforms or systems, be sure to list them on your resume.