Physician Resume Samples & Writing Guide

After completing your journey from high school to medical school, surviving the hardest rotations in medical school, and the long hours of residency, it's time to take that final step and land a job as a physician. Writing an excellent physician resume is a big part of making that happen. Your resume needs to stand out without being distracting. It also needs to be informative and detailed, but it can't be too long, and the information can't look crammed together. In other words, writing a great resume can be very tricky.

That's where we come in! Before we show you some samples of resumes that manage to do all of the things we described above, we're going to go through some of the critical elements that you need to keep in mind as you write your physician resume.

The Format of a Physician Resume

The format of your resume is very important because it is the first thing that the recruiter or HR professional will see. As you probably already know, first impressions are important. You want to choose formatting options that will make your resume appear professional, clean, and efficient. One of the many things that your resume is supposed to do is inspire confidence in your abilities, and the format is a big part of that.

For instance, if you were looking to hire a physician and received two resumes. The first one is two pages long, contains paragraphs written in a tiny font that you have to squint to read, and you're not sure where each section begins. On the other hand, the other resume is one page long, has clear sections with bullet point descriptions, and is very easy to read. What would you infer about the doctors who wrote these resumes? The format used by the second applicant earns them extra points already before you've even looked at their qualifications.

The truth is that there is no golden template for this kind of document. Much like with an MBA resume or a CV for grad school, or law school, the key to making sure a resume is well-formatted is ensuring that it is easy to read and follow. Here is what you should pay attention to for your physician’s resume:

The Content of a Physician Resume

Now that you know what your document should look like, let’s discuss what you need to include in your resume. It’s important to understand that you can’t just blindly stuff in a list of everything you’ve ever done since high school. When it comes to a physician’s resume, what you leave out matters as much as what you put on the page. We recommend organizing your resume in clearly labeled sections to make it easy to read and to make it easy for your potential employer to find specific information when they are looking for it.

Check out this infographic for the list of sections that we recommend you include: 

Contact information

This is the most straightforward section on your resume. As the name suggests, you basically just need to provide all the information your potential employer needs to contact you. Remember to only list contact details where you want to be contacted about job opportunities. You should also stay away from informal email addresses with cute nicknames. You should keep it simple and provide the following: 

1. Name & Professional qualification or educational degree (MD, D.O, etc)
2. Mailing address
3. E-mail address 
4. Phone number 
5. Link to LinkedIn profile (optional but highly recommended)

Summary/Objective

Your resume should include a clear summary or career Objective. It shouldn't be longer than 1-2 sentences long, and it should be at the top of your resume, preferably underneath your name. This is one of the first sections that a recruiter or potential employer will read, so you need to make sure it is well-written and compelling enough to prompt them to continue reading. Use impactful words like compassionate or motivated to describe your personality. Your summary or objective is supposed to give the reader a quick rundown of who you are and what you hope to achieve. 

Experience

Depending on your level of experience, this section can take up most of your resume, but you need to ensure that you only include relevant information. We recommend sticking to the following:

1. Organization name
2. City and state
3. Position title
4. Dates (start date and end date)
5. Summary of duties, accomplishments, and success. 

 You should list your experiences in reverse chronological order. You can divide the experiences into different subsections if necessary. For example, you can include a subcategory for research experience, volunteer experience, and postgraduate training for your residency, fellowship, etc. You can customize this section to suit your background. 

 Remember to write the summaries in bullet points, with every bullet point having one to three lines. To make sure your descriptions are impactful, you should use action verbs such as "managed," "improved," or "modified." You should also quantify your achievements as much as possible. It’s also a good idea to get some inspiration from the job description of the position you are applying for. Look at the key action words, and traits listed on the job description and try to include them on your resume.

Education

As with the experience section, you should list your education in reverse chronological order. We recommend focusing on your adult education and leaving out the high school information. You should start with your medical school, mention the medical school name, city, state, degree obtained (MD or DO), and the start and finish dates. Then, you can mention your undergraduate degree. Provide the school name, city, state, degree, major, and start and end dates.

Not sure what the differences are between Osteopathic and Allopathic Medicine? This video is for you:

Certifications/professional memberships (optional)

We recommend mentioning that you are a licensed physician in your summary and in your cover letter so that it is highly visible. That said, if you’ve got other relevant certifications or are a member of any other professional associations, you should show them in a special section. Credentials and professional associations help build your credibility, thus making you a more attractive candidate. 

Additional sections (optional)

This is the section in which you highlight relevant skills or achievements things that do not fit into the other categories that we've discussed. This includes significant extracurricular achievements, relevant skills or languages, awards, and honors, or even interests. You can choose to have one additional information section with subcategories or simply select one category and only include information about that. To put that into context, take a look at the examples below. The first example shows an additional information section with subsections, while the second is focused on relevant skills only. 

Physician Resume Samples 

Physician resume sample #1:

Physician resume sample #2:

Physician resume sample #3:

Conclusion 

Crafting a physician resume that stands out positively is challenging but possible. Remember that there is no golden template for resumes. You simply need to focus on only including relevant information and formatting your resume to be easy to read and follow. If you follow the tips outlined above and use the physician resume samples that we've provided for guidance, you will be well on your way to getting that job.

FAQs

To your success,

Your friends at BeMo

BeMo Academic Consulting 

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