This is the longest and most important part of your resume as a nurse practitioner (NP). If you are in academics or research, you will write a CV in which case you can have longer sections for publications and grants. Articulating your work experience is the best way to stand out. List your information in bulleted form. If you are relatively young in terms of your NP career, list and bullet experience dating back to your first position. For a longer career, include a bulleted list for approximately four jobs, then simply list the remaining ones. Additionally, create a bulleted list of the skills and experience that directly correlate to the job for which you are applying. That is why keeping an ongoing list is valuable; you can change the bullets depending on what provides the best evidence of your experience that applies to the job you want.

Format for Work Experience:

Clinical Experience:

Hospital or Clinic, City, State, Date

Role – Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, Unit

Or Staff Nurse II, Unit

Brief description of the hospital or clinic

Primary scope of practice: Collaborative member of the Pediatric Critical Care Team, including the procedural sedation service, Pediatric Critical Care Transport Team, and Palliative Care Team.

Scope of practice: Evaluation, history & physical exams

• • Consultation, medical assessment & management of children (ages: one month-22 years) with such diagnosis as (ex. chronic conditions)
  • Treating and managing care with organ transplantation teams including multi-visceral organ transplants, sepsis, and other complex medical conditions.

Clinical skills:

• • arterial & central venous line placement
  • sepsis evaluations
  • airway management
  • moderate & deep sedation (>5000), PICC Line Insertions

Other activities: Pediatric Bioethics program, Society for Pediatric Sedation Founding Member.

Or Accomplishments:

Another Option:

Hospital or Clinic, City State, Date

Role –Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, Unit

Or Staff Nurse II, Unit

Brief description of the hospital or clinic

• Provided inpatient care and GI consultation services as a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner with 12 Pediatric Gastroenterologists.
• Evaluated, diagnosed, and developed treatment plans for pediatric patients with various gastrointestinal problems.
• Facilitated referrals to transplant centers for patients requiring small bowel and/or liver transplantation and participated in long-term care of post-transplant patients.

Include 5-7 procedures that are most relevant to the job you are applying for, especially for a new grad, if you are changing units, or if you are interviewing for a high procedural-based position. Continue to build your procedures list throughout your career. You will find this useful for your resume as well as for credentialing and annual review processes. Use your self-assessment portfolio to make your continuing education (CE) choices as you decide on the skills and procedures that you want to keep current and develop. The more intentional you are about your capabilities, the more rewarding your career will be. According to Locke’s setting theory, setting goals, self-assessment, and feedback are powerful motivators. Goals and feedback not only help you get the job done, but they empower you to make career choices that are satisfying to you.

Here is the type of information you can include on a list of your scope of practice:

• Completion of the history and physical exam that is appropriate for the chief complaint and correlates with the complexity of the presenting problem
• Developing and implementing plans of care
• Requesting appropriate consultations
• Collaborating with internal and external providers
• Ordering and interpreting radiological information
• Ordering and interpreting laboratory tests
• Prescribing appropriate pain medications
• Prescribing appropriate out-patient medications
• Discharge teaching
• Participating in and conducting staff or family education

Accomplishments demonstrate your skills, knowledge and experience and the way you have applied them to solve problems, meet objectives, or provide leadership and education. If you can, try to identify achievements made when you went beyond the call of duty to solve a problem or improve the work environment. List both independent accomplishments and those that involved teamwork to help convey your value. Use quantifiable measures such as the ones below. Think of your accomplishments in terms of the performance level needed to achieve the accomplishment; the actions taken to solve or improve a situation; and the results obtained. Often, accomplishments can be measured in terms of time saved, patient outcomes, family and patient education, safety, efficiency, research, and money saved. Try to identify accomplishments that employers will relate to contributions you can make to the new position you seek.

Sometimes individuals underestimate their accomplishments or do not consider a specific accomplishment important. However, no contribution is insignificant, and all your previous activities may be accomplishments if you:

• Achieved more with the same resources, such as increasing production or decreasing waste
• Educated, trained or otherwise contributed to the clinical knowledge of peers, nursing staff or health care workers
• Resolved problems with a minimum increase in time, effort, expense, personnel, etc.
• Created and presented curriculum to families, patients, staff, or physicians
• Reduced costs
• Developed or improved productivity and teamwork
• Designed, implemented, and developed a program from start to finish
• Improved quality, safety or work conditions
• Initiated, lead, or contributed to a committee, research, goal, outcome, resolution of group or team issues, project, or other contributing activity.
• Chaired, developed, or implemented a program, quality or safety project or committee
• Participated in root cause analysis or hospital wide committee
• Effectively educated or designed a program around evidence-based practice
• Championed, led or developed electronic health records, (specifically list the name of the EHR) implementation, utilization, or solutions-based outcome

To help identify accomplishments, ask yourself the following questions:

Business/patient focus

• Did you improve cost-to-value?  Did you develop any cost-cutting measures without comprising value?  If so, how much? Under what conditions?
• Did you initiate policies or procedures to improve patient satisfaction?
• Do you have training in coding and billing for your services?
• Did you use electronic health records to cut costs or track costs?

Innovation

• Did you recognize opportunities to improve processes and develop alternatives? If so, how?  What were the results?
• Did you suggest or launch a new product or program?  Did you take the lead or provide support?  What were the results?
• Do you offer any unique patient-value programs, such as breastfeeding counseling or asthma education?

Initiative

• Did you assume new responsibilities that were not part of your job?
• Did you ask for new projects, or were they assigned to you?  Why were you selected?
• Did you conduct community education presentations and education?

Teamwork

• Did you participate in any group problem-solving programs?  What actions did you take or recommend?  What were the results?  Highlight any specific role that you played.

Planning and organization leadership

• Did you develop and implement systems to measure performance against objectives?  What were the results?
• Did you lead or initiate an event? What was the outcome?

Leadership

Did you champion important issues through implementation?  What were the results?