If you’re a nursing student—whether you’re in a BSc Nursing programme, starting a pre-nursing course, completing your clinical placements, applying for a work placement, or preparing to graduate—your CV is the most important tool for securing your next opportunity.
To help you stand out from the competition, we’ve outlined what makes a nursing student CV successful in 2026—even if you have no clinical experience yet. Get ready to build a CV and write a nursing student cover letter that showcases your transferable skills, relevant experience, and achievements, and clearly communicates your potential to recruiters.
Here’s what this guide covers:
- 9 editable nursing student CV examples for beginner, graduate, placement, and clinical roles
- How to structure your CV to pass ATS filters and highlight clinical training—even before graduation
- ↪ How to use clinical placements and coursework to substitute for formal work experience
- ↪ How to write results-focused bullet points that reflect your strengths in communication, patient care, and teamwork
Why this CV works
- You’ll hear many arguments for and against having a career objective for your nursing student CV. However, we only recommend adding one if 1) you’re undergoing a career change or 2) you’ve just finished nursing training, and this is your first full-time nursing position.
Why this CV works
- Try to keep your nurse practitioner student CV to a single page. If you’re on the verge of one page spilling into two, try some useful CV formatting tricks, such as reducing the font size and page margins to fit more content (while ensuring it remains readable).
View more nursing student practitioner CVs >
Why this CV works
- The absence of paid work experience shouldn’t create a gap in your beginner nursing student CV. Seize the opportunity to showcase skills acquired in practical classes, volunteer opportunities, and research projects.
Why this CV works
- Demonstrate your research, communication, and problem-solving skills, and enhance them by including the experience you’ve gained from clinical placements on your nursing student clinical experience CV.
Why this CV works
- When creating an excellent CV for a graduate nursing student, the small details are important, so when it comes to fixing your CV, consistency is crucial. For example, your work experience bullet points should end the same way, either with or without full stops.
View more graduate nursing student CVs >
Why this CV works
- Your relevant educational background and licence indicate you’re the ideal fit. However, the recruiter has probably seen another student CV from a licensed vocational nursing course showcasing the same qualifications. So, what could be your saving grace here? Try highlighting transferable skills from past projects in reverse chronological order.
Why this CV works
- Be creative with the bullet points in your pre-nursing student CV and start each one with strong action words like Monitored and Undertook to be straightforward and convey your impacts from the outset.
Why this CV works
- If you have any experience in the healthcare sector or leadership expertise outside of healthcare, include them in a hobbies and interests section on your CV (also titled “activities”). Additionally, volunteer experience is a good idea, especially if it relates to healthcare.
View more nursing student for externship CVs >
Why this CV works
- Your nursing student (no experience) CV works best if you include only a handful of relevant skills in your CV’s skills section. List any specialities you might have (like paediatrics or geriatrics), plus technical skills like clinical documentation.
Related CV guides
Need Help with Your Nursing Student Covering Letter?
It’s satisfying to finish writing your CV, but don’t forget about writing a cover letter, too! We’ve got you covered (get it?) with a cover letter template you can edit in Google Docs and Word.
Why this covering letter works
- When writing your cover letter as a postgraduate nursing student, emphasise how your background will benefit the new company. For example, highlighting technical specialisation and adaptability in high-pressure work environments is excellent!
- Always link your skills to the organisation’s values by using phrases like “shape the future of healthcare” from their website’s mission statement.
- If you have exceptional experience, such as an exemplary bedside manner or familiarity with a specialised area like paediatrics, showcase these.
- Always ensure you list your certifications in your graduate nursing student CV, of course—but it doesn’t hurt to mention them in your cover letter, too!
- It’s also ideal to establish how much experience you have alongside your qualifying certifications at the beginning of your cover letter.
- An extra CV tip: your CV should be concise, but your cover letter should tell a story about your qualifying background.
How to Write a Nursing Student CV
Writing a CV as a nursing student can seem challenging when you have limited clinical experience or formal work history. However, recruiters focus less on job titles and more on your ability to provide patient care, work well with a team, and handle the demands of healthcare.
This section will show you how to create a strong nursing student CV for 2026. You’ll learn how to format your CV for ATS systems, highlight your clinical training, and showcase the skills that set you apart. Start by looking at our nursing student CV examples, then use our CV checker and add a well-written cover letter to complete your application.
Here are the main steps to write a nursing student CV:
- Choose a simple, ATS-friendly format that quickly highlights your strengths
- Begin with your clinical placements, labs, or healthcare projects. Remember, experience is not limited to paid work.
- Demonstrate soft skills such as communication, teamwork, and attention to detail, and back them up with real examples.
- Write a career objective that aligns with the specific role or department you wish to join
- Whenever possible, use numbers to demonstrate your impact, but keep it balanced.
How to write your nursing student CV objective or summary
Without direct work experience, you have more space to include a summary and discuss your potential. Use this opportunity to highlight your enthusiasm, transferable skills, and career aspirations.
Also, align your professional summary with the job description. For instance, if the employer is looking for a patient-centred professional, you should showcase examples of how you put the interest of patients first in previous roles as a trainee or during practical projects.
Understand the difference: objective vs. summary
A CV objective is particularly helpful if you’re a recent graduate with limited clinical experience. Focus on your professional goals and preferred work environments.
A CV summary is suitable for applicants with prior clinical work, placements, internships, or externships. Highlight key achievements, skills, and willingness to learn.
Customise for each role or clinical setting
A generic summary can feel impersonal. Instead, tailor it to the specific role and organisation you want to work for.
For example, use the term “paediatric” if you are applying to a children’s hospital, or “geriatrics” for a long-term care facility. Try to match the employer’s expectations by using a similar tone to the job advert. Also, mention some of the skills and responsibilities listed in the job ad.
What are some examples of student nurse CV objectives?
Entry-level nursing student CV objective:
Dedicated nursing student seeking an entry-level registered nurse position at Stanford Health Care. Eager to apply clinical knowledge, strong communication skills, and a patient-centred approach to provide high-quality care and support a collaborative healthcare team in delivering exceptional patient outcomes.
Nursing student intern CV objective:
Nursing student with impeccable data analysis and interpersonal skills seeking to gain real-life clinical experience in a community-focused health organisation like ChristianaCare. Excellent timekeeper, team player, and critical thinker, passionate about bridging the health services access gap among vulnerable and marginalised populations.
Experienced student CV summary (with placements):
Nursing degree candidate with over 200 clinical hours in ICU and medical-surgical units at St. Mary’s Health Systems. Skilled in monitoring vital signs, assisting with wound care, and ensuring patient safety under supervision.
How to format a nursing student CV
Your nursing student CV should be formatted to effectively present your strengths through education, clinical experience, and transferable skills in a clear, ATS-friendly layout. Your aim is to persuade recruiters to overlook your lack of formal experience by demonstrating that you possess the practical and academic foundations necessary to thrive in any clinical setting.
Choose a simple, professional layout
The reverse chronological format is the best choice for your nursing student CV because it lists your qualifications from the most recent, showing your career progression and a timeline of your experiences that make you the most suitable candidate for the job. Also, this layout is ATS-friendly and gives recruiters an easy time when they review your CV.
Use headings for key sections
Start with these key sections:
- CV header: Full name, contact details, LinkedIn profile (only if relevant), and location
- Professional summary or objective: Provide an overview of your skills, career aspirations, projects, and potential to persuade recruiters of your strengths.
- Education: List your degree (for example, Bachelor of Science in Nursing), your university, your expected graduation date, and your grade if it is a 2:1 or higher
- Clinical experience: Include your supervised placements, the names of the facilities, the units you worked in (such as paediatrics or ICU), and bullet points describing your key achievements.
- Skills section: List your main skills, such as taking vital signs, patient charting, using EMR software, teamwork, communication, and empathy.
- Certifications: Include any certifications you hold, such as CPR/BLS, ACLS, or other specialist qualifications.
- Bonus sections: You can also include volunteer work, memberships in student nursing associations, and relevant coursework, especially if you are a recent graduate.
Maintain a clear, consistent hierarchy
Make your CV easy to read and parse by:
- Bolding headings for each section
- Avoiding graphics, tables, and text boxes to make your CV easy to read and process
- Saving and submitting as a .docx or PDF (non-scanned) format for ATS compatibility (unless the employer requests a different format)
H3 How to write your nursing student CV experience, even with no work history
You probably haven’t worked in a clinic or hospital, but that shouldn’t stop you from creating a nursing student CV experience section that will capture the interest of hiring managers. Consider your academic projects and clinical placements to identify the lessons that prepared you for patient care.
Avoid labelling this section as “Work experience” or omitting it altogether. Instead, use a title like “Clinical Learning” or “Clinical Training”. This indicates that although you lack paid work experience, you have worked in an environment that mirrors real-world experience.
Replace “Experience” with “Clinical Learning”
For example, if you have a clinical placement for 120 hours in the Med-surg unit, you can present that as follows:
St. Mary’s Hospital, Medical-Surgical Unit — 120 Clinical Hours
- Assisted two senior nurses in monitoring over 25 patients daily for vital signs and wound care
- Tracked and documented assessments accurately in Epic EPR
- Implemented patient-centred communication strategies, improving satisfaction scores
Utilise academic projects and simulations
Academic case studies, nursing placements, and lab simulations are part of your work experience toolkit to demonstrate your skills, and you can apply them to the job.
For example, you can present the outcomes of leading a team during a project that simulates a cardiac arrest situation and how to manage it. Here’s an appropriate bullet point:
- Led a team of four through a simulated cardiac arrest scenario, achieving a perfect record in response time and post-care medication and observation.
How to quantify impact on your nursing student CV
When you quantify your impact, you’re reframing your duties in terms of results. The outcome is giving recruiters and AI scanners one thing they both understand better: your achievements through numerical data.
Why numbers matter
Numbers provide the clearest picture of your capabilities by presenting something the healthcare sector can relate to. Pairing such outcomes with keywords and active verbs further aligns you with the job’s demands, which is beneficial for your CV’s visibility and retrieval by the ATS.
Imagine this before and after scenario:
Before:
- Assisted with patient care during clinical placements
After:
- Assisted a nurse and a clinical officer in caring for 28 patients per shift, enhancing workflow efficiency for the hospital’s team.
What you can measure, even as a student
You can add measurable details to almost any aspect of your training:
- Time: Clinical hours
- Volume: Patient interaction
- Practical projects: Problems solved
- Scale: Number of teams and members collaborated with
- Enhancement: Patient satisfaction scores from post-visit surveys
How to include relevant education and qualifications
You should include your nursing education, coursework, and training to enhance your chances in interviews.
How to add education to your nursing student CV
Bachelor of Science
Nursing
University of Delaware
2021-Current Newark, DE
Also, if you have any certifications, awards for outstanding work, or special licences, include them in your CV. They demonstrate your unique qualities and bring you closer to securing the job. Only include them if they’re relevant to the role you’re applying for.
Examples of certifications/licenses for a nursing student’s CV:
- Basic Life Support (BLS) Certification
- Phlebotomy Qualification
- Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS) Certification
- Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) Licence
- Medication Administration Certification
What skills should be on a nursing student’s CV?
Almost every employer uses applicant tracking systems (ATS) to screen applications before they reach an actual hiring manager. That’s why you must include relevant keywords that describe skills and other clinical terms listed in the job description. There is a high chance that your CV won’t pass the screening stage if it lacks these crucial phrases.
Both direct and transferable skills will set you apart from the other candidates. Emphasise your competencies in nursing tools and soft skills gained during placements, practical projects, and other activities outside the traditional classroom.
Examples of skills for a nursing student’s CV
- Time Management
- Critical thinking
- Problem-solving
- Pulse oximeters
- Lexicomp
- Oracle Cerner
- SPSS
- HIPAA
- Patient admission and discharge
Key points
- Select a clean, professional layout that is compatible with applicant tracking systems
- Begin with a brief summary or objective that outlines your nursing focus and demonstrates your readiness for clinical work.
- List your education and clinical experience before any unrelated jobs
- Provide examples of your impact using numbers or results whenever possible.
- Highlight your key nursing skills, such as patient care, EMR documentation, communication, and adhering to safety regulations.
- Include certifications such as BLS, ACLS, or CPR to demonstrate your qualifications.
- Include any community service that demonstrates you are compassionate and work well with others.
- Tailor your CV for each job or employer, such as paediatrics, medical-surgical, geriatrics, or different types of facilities.
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Nursing Student CV FAQs
Tailor your nursing student CV to the specific job you’re applying for. You should highlight relevant skills, include education, coursework, training, and briefly summarise your professional profile.
A single page is sufficient to demonstrate your strengths and persuade recruiters that you’re the right candidate for the role. Don’t include everything you can think of; only include your education, experience, projects, coursework, qualifications, and contact information. Be concise and only add what enhances your credentials.
It’s a CV that includes the clinical experience that a nursing student acquired from a healthcare institution to learn practical skills from experts. Most importantly, the CV highlights clinical skills and unique qualifications that other candidates may not have.
BeamJobs has a comprehensive list of resume examples where you can find the perfect nursing student resume sample that you can use to write yours. We also help you, like many other successful job seekers, build a resume from scratch, optimize it for your dream job, and help you write a cover letter to complete your application.
