Palliative Care Social Worker Resume Example & Writing Guide
Use this Palliative Care Social Worker resume example and guide to improve your career and write a powerful resume that will separate you from the competition.
Palliative care social workers are part of a growing field that focuses on the needs of people living with serious illness. And while their job description may vary depending on their setting and scope of responsibilities, social workers in this field share a common goal: to help people manage their physical pain, emotional distress, and spiritual concerns.
If you’re interested in working in palliative care but don’t know where to start with your resume writing, here are some tips and an example for reference.
How to Write a Palliative Care Social Worker Resume
Here’s how to write a resume of your own.
Write Compelling Bullet Points
When you’re writing bullet points, it can be tempting to focus on the tasks you performed. But that’s not always the most effective approach.
Instead, you can use your bullet points to showcase your key responsibilities and the results of your work. So rather than saying you “provided counseling services to patients and families,” you could say you “provided counseling services to patients and families experiencing grief and loss, resulting in a 95% satisfaction rate among patients.”
The second bullet point paints a much clearer picture of the type of work you did and the results of your efforts. And it also provides a specific number to demonstrate how successful you were.
Identify and Include Relevant Keywords
When you apply for a palliative care social worker role, your resume is likely to go through an applicant tracking system (ATS) that scans it for certain keywords. The ATS looks for keywords related to the position, like “end-of-life care” or “hospice care” in order to determine whether your experience is a match for the job. If you don’t have enough relevant keywords on your resume, the ATS might discard your application before a human ever sees it.
To make sure your application makes it past the ATS, use this list of palliative care social work keywords as a starting point:
- Palliative Care
- Hospice Care
- End-of-Life Care
- Mental Health
- Social Work
- Social Services
- Psychotherapy
- Psychosocial
- Case Management
- Psychiatry
- Crisis Intervention
- Working with Adolescents
- Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
- Working with Children
- Geriatric Care
- Mediation
- Group Therapy
- Trauma Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Nonprofit Organizations
- Community Outreach
- Fundraising
- Volunteer Management
- Volunteer Coordination
- Social Work Research
- Microsoft Access
- Psychology
- Clinical Psychology
- Trauma Informed Care
- Personal Injury Law
Showcase Your Technical Skills
Palliative care social workers need to be proficient in a number of software programs and systems in order to effectively do their jobs. These might include case management software, electronic health records (EHR) systems, and palliative care databases. Additionally, palliative care social workers need to be comfortable using technology to communicate with other members of the healthcare team, including doctors, nurses, and patients.