Nurses Duties and Responsibilities for Your Resume

I have gathered some useful information to assist you in discovering the duties and responsibilities of a nurse, the skills that nursing employers look for in candidates, common interview questions, the definition of nursing, tips for writing a nurse’s resume, and nursing job opportunities available in the UK. I have highlighted your Google search related to nursing in blue below. You can click on the link to skip over and read through the relevant search.

25 Nurses Duties and Responsibilities for a Nurse Resume

Duties and responsibilities of a Staff nurse vary based on his/her area of clinical expertise. Staff nurses always play a vital role in their patients’ health promotion and well-being through numerous services. Staff Nurses fundamentally concentrate on caring for their patients, educating the patients and their families regarding the prevention of diseases and promotion of health. Consequently, nurses assess their patient’s health problems and needs, plan and develop nursing care plans, implement and evaluate the care, and maintain a record of their day-to-day clinical interventions. The below-given list below outlines the grass-root duties and responsibilities of a Staff nurse:

Assess, observe and record the patient’s general health conditions.
Coordinate with physicians and other multidisciplinary healthcare professionals for creating and evaluating individualised care plans for patients.
Address emotional and psychological needs of patients and their families, to create a harmonious working environment.
Analyse patient’s symptoms correctly, diagnose the disease accurately and take imperative steps for his/her active recovery.
Maintain records and reports of patient’s medical histories, and monitor developments in their health conditions.
Be alert and observant on every aspect of patient care including diet, physical activities and psychosocial interactions.
Educate patients and their families on health maintenance and disease prevention as required.
Administer medications and treatments as prescribed.
Review medications and treatments of patients as indicated by their general health conditions and response to treatment.
Take part in discussions with pharmacists and physicians while dealing with critical situations.
Provide immediate and advanced care during medical emergencies, like accidents, burns, cardiac arrest, stroke etc.
Arrange specialised clinical areas for investigative procedures and decontamination of equipment and instruments post-procedure.
Prepare patients for medical examinations and surgical procedures.
Assisting doctors and surgeons during invasive and noninvasive interventions and surgical procedures.
Complete lab work and update the team about the patient’s condition during anaesthesia as indicated.
Provide hygienic and safe working environment in compliance with healthcare procedures and interventions.
Adhering to organisational policies, protocols and regulations and maintain accurate medical records.
Periodic checking of the stock in the area of work, maintaining the inventory and placing stock orders as wanted.
Teaching and supervision of junior nurses and student nurses.
The delegation of responsibilities to team members relevant to their level of competency.
Take part in research activities to improve nursing practices and upshot healthcare.
Exhibit problem-solving skills and team strategies to deal with complaints and concerns from patients and their families.
Develop and maintain therapeutic communication with other healthcare professionals for maintaining harmonious relationships.
Continuing professional development through in-service education and specialist educational programmes.
Practice within the scope of nursing practice, adhering to national and international policies and protocols, and organisational and regulatory bodies guidelines.
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12 Top Nursing Skills Employers Want on Your CV

A staff nurse, who is involved directly in the patients care every day is a vital part of the healthcare system. Staff nurses are healthcare providers, who examine the patients for the right treatment. They are advocates for patients between the doctor and the patient’s family. These professionals communicate with the family members and share the necessary information about the patient’s medical conditions, plan of care, the physician’s instructions etc. Staff nurses generally work in hospitals, outpatient clinics, nursing centres and medical centres. For a Staff nurse to become a successful professional, she/he is required to possess certain qualities and skills along with the required educational qualifications. These traits are either developed in the classroom or through clinical exposure.

Alert and Observant

Being alert and observant is a requisite for Staff nurses to perform efficiently. In the event of unpredicted emergency situations, traumatic incidents or terrible sicknesses a Staff nurse is expected to be alert, calm and cautious, particularly where there is no immediate help from a doctor available. Staff nurse should bear in mind that any delay in taking urgent decision can risk the life of the patient.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is yet another skill a Staff nurse should develop to practice effectively. As nurses advance in clinical knowledge, gain clinical experience and continue further education, they develop the skill to recognise the problems of a patient on their own. Staff nurses should be competent enough to acquire self-sufficiency through critical thinking which helps them to modify according to the changes. Critical thinking is a fundamental quality which enables the Staff nurse to assess the situations and to act accordingly.

Judgement and Decision Making

Judgement and clinical decision-making traits are essential for a Staff nurse to handle the clinical situations effectively. A Staff nurse should have the required skills to analyse, review and judge various situations in the medical field which could be a sudden casualty or an emergency situation. Based on the judgement a Staff nurse should be able to take accurate and proper decisions considering the event. A Staff nurse cannot lose temper or get irritated with any situation as it can result in a fatal situation. Each day is unique in the medical field, and so are clinical judgments and decisionmaking.

Organisational Skills

A Staff nurse should be well organised in his/her work and should be able to perform as planned every day in the workplace. An individual nurse can be assigned to many patients to look after at any time, and therefore the nurse must be prepared enough to shoulder all the delegated responsibilities. These planning and organisational skills are essential while completing medical records, administering medications etc. along with routine nursing interventions. Thus, the nurse could minimise the burden in the event of an unexpected crisis or emergency situation.

Kind and Compassionate

Kindness and compassion are yet another essential qualities of a staff nurse. A staff nurse who is efficient should be kind, compassionate, non-judgmental and have the ability to provide support to the patient both emotionally and psychologically. A staff nurse has to look after all kinds of patients, based on his/her care settings and therefore, to remain calm and composed is an essential professional quality.

Excellent Communication Skills

Excellent communication skill is one of the vital qualities of a staff nurse as he/she has to communicate with patients, family members, doctors and other healthcare professionals. Staff nurses cannot provide comprehensive care to their patients unless they have excellent communication skills. A satff nurse should be also a good listener, and the conversations should be soft and polite. A staff nurse who has the ability to handle multiple languages and provide comprehensiveness ordinarily paid higher.

Stress Management

Stress management is pivotal for nurses in their day to day work. Staff nurses have to go through endless physical and mental trauma and stress as part of their job every day. Nurses workload is complex and also hectic, and they have to deal with all kinds of emotions of their patients, including anger, frustration, pain, and agony. However, it is vital for the nurse to remain calm in such stressful circumstances managing their stress for them to carry out their duties successfully and competently.

Dedication and Patience

A staff nurse can not work efficiently unless he/she is dedicated and have the patience. The quality patience will help the nurse to overcome anxiety and misunderstandings and will assist with decision making. A staff nurse who is looking to be successful in his/ her career should be committed to the job. Dedicated nurses work hard to improve their education, achieve high-grade expertise and put all their efforts to become leaders in their field.

Detail Oriented

Staff nurses should be focused, resilient, and detail oriented. Staff nurses assess, plan, implement, and evaluate the care of their patients, administer medications and prepare patients reports. In the healthcare field, there is no scope for even a small error, as it critically endangers the life of patients hence, minor detail holds great importance and consequence. Staff nurses should be detail oriented and take notes and follow the orders of the doctors with great attention.

Responsible

Staff nurses are responsible to themselves, to their patients and patients families, their organisation and their governing body. All Staff nurses have the ability to fulfil their duties and responsibilities with complete care and precision. Staff nurses actions have a direct impact on the life of a patient, and therefore any mistake or error has no room in their deeds. Hence all Staff nurses should perform efficiently and effectively without any negligence. Moreover, Staff nurses should be responsible and cautious to deal with emergencies and casualties.

Advocacy

Advocacy is one of the important skills a Staff nurse should develop as he/she acts as an advocate for his/her patient at some stage in their dealing with the patients. Patients could be lonely or frustrated at the time of illness or while getting the treatment. Staff nurses provide the best possible quality care at this time and act as an advocate for the patient. Staff nurses also provide their patients with mental support, which helps them for a speedy recovery. A Staff nurse act as a mediator for patients’ family and doctor on behalf of their patient for them to access the best possible quality care.

Physical and Mental Endurance

A Staff nurse should be physically healthy and mentally strong to provide the patient with the best quality care. Staff nurses should always be agile and quick when caring for their patients. Moreover, a Staff nurse should be active and effective at the time of on-call duties and extended hours. However, there are incidents of nurses encountering mental stress and trauma while caring for their patients based on their clinical situations. Therefore, psychological steadiness and perseverance are requisite for the nursing profession.

An individual’s educational background is essential to becoming a qualified Staff nurse. However, along with this, every candidate must possess the qualities mentioned above to provide patients with evidence-based quality and effective care. If you want to become a successful and dedicated Staff nurse, then try to incorporate these skills to work on the right path.

Staff Nurses Interview Questions for UK, Ireland, US & Canada, Australia and Newland

Tell me about a time when you have provided effective patient education. A lot of healthcare employers are leaning towards asking these behavioural-based interview questions. This is to understand who you truly are and know how you will behave under certain circumstances.

Answering behavioural-based questions overall is to tell them the results of what you learned from them or what you might do differently. Another one is to describe a situation when you had to work with difficulty and how you handled that situation you want to talk about.

Staff Nurse Behavioural Interview Questions

1. Tell me about a time when you gave an effective patient education?
2. Describe a time when you had to work with a difficult coworker? How did you handle the situation?
3. Describe a time when you were proud of your healthcare team? What is your role in the situation?
4. Tell me about a time when a patient’s family was not satisfied with your care? How did you handle that situation?
5. Describe a time you had to explain medical terminology to someone who was not medically trained?

Do you feel like attending a mock nurses interview for Ireland or any other western countries?

You can attend our sample nurses interview questions for Ireland to check your strength and knowledge. Moreover, our dedicated nursing tutors will give you the feedback based on your performance for free. You can click on the link below to get your sample interview questions.

Staff Nurses Adaptability Questions

6. Describe a time when your facility was undergoing a change? How did you adapt to change?
7. Tell me about a time when you didn’t know something at work? How did you find the correct information?

Staff Nurses Team management Questions

8. Talk about a time when you work in a fast-paced setting? How did you prioritise tasks while providing excellent patient care?
9. Tell me about a goal you have accomplished? How did you ensure that you have achieved that goal?

Staff Nurse Communication Questions

10. Give me an example of a time when you were able to persuade a patient successfully?
11. Talk about a time when you did not communicate well? How would you handle such a situation differently in the future?

Staff Nurses Core Values and Motivations Questions

12. Tell me about a time where you did the work over the requirement? What motivates you to do the additional?
13. What is the most difficult about being a nurse? Did you overcome this difficulty?
14. How do you overcome your challenges as a nurse? How do you handle challenging situations

Staff Nurse Most Common Questions

15. Tell me about yourself?
16. What is your greatest strength and what are your weaknesses?
17. How do you handle a stressful situation?
18. Why should we hire you?

The Definition of Nursing

Nursing is a broad subject, and when you try to describe nursing, it varies from different nursing departments in general. We are here to share with you the popular branches of nursing and it’s the professional view of definitions. Staff Nursing Meaning in academic view, who has graduated from a nursing program and met the requirements outlined by Indian Nursing Council in India or state level Nursing Council like Kerala Nursing Council in Kerala to obtain a nursing registration and to become a Staff Nurse (SN) and practice nursing.

Even though Nursing (SN) often specialised in a field of practice, they are worked in a wide variety of professional settings; like supervising care delivered by Healthcare workers, student nurses, licensed practical nurses, unlicensed assistive personnel, and less-experienced Staff nurses. Here you can discover about Quick Ways to Get Kerala Nursing Council Registration and apply certificates online.

Surgical Nurse or Theatre Nurse

A Surgical Nurse is a speciality area in the nursing profession; specialise in pre-operative care, during the surgery and post-operative care. There are different speciality areas a Surgical Nurse can focus on. Support and assist the patient, surgeons, surgical technicians, nurse anaesthetists and nurse practitioners; those who acquire more skill in these areas become acceptable as Theatre Nurse or Scrub Nurse.

Medical Nurse

The term Medical Nurse is connecting with the care of patients in a broad range of settings and largest pool of professionals in the field of nursing. But it’s come to the career aspects it’s a starting point and nurturing towards to your devoted speciality in nursing. The most distinguishing characteristic of a Medical Nurse is; at any moment of time, they have to provide care for several patients and coordinating the care flow of the patients such as; administering medications, educating families, discharging patients and admitting new ones and organise entire healthcare team.

The Medical Nurse should obtain skills on the career; high-level critical thinking skills, vast knowledge of disease states and body systems, robust management skills, and the ability to stay calm under pressure, always in motion physically, clinically, intellectually, and emotionally.

Pediatric Nurse

The primary role of a Pediatric Nurse is to administer procedures and medicines directly to children according to prescribed nursing care plans.

Those who specialise as Neonatal Nurse is working with newborns; and mainly focus on providing care and support who were born prematurely, suffering from health problems such as congenital disabilities, infections or heart deformities.

Midwife

Midwifery is a healthcare science and healthcare profession that deals with pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum, women’s sexual and reproductive health including gynaecological exams, family planning, and menopausal care. Staff Nurse who wish to become midwives; they have to complete midwifery programs or postgraduate follow the guidelines in accordance with the Nursing Council you affiliate. The Midwife also educated and trained to recognise the variations of normal progress of labour and understand how to deal with deviations from normal. They may intervene in high-risk situations such as breech births, twin births and births where the baby is in a posterior position, using non-invasive techniques.

Intensive Care Unit (ICU)

The Intensive Care Unit or ICU nursing is the field of nursing with a focus on the utmost care of the critically ill or unstable patients following extensive injury, surgery or life-threatening diseases. Critical care nurses can be found working in a wide variety of environments and specialities, such as general intensive care units, medical intensive care units, surgical intensive care units, trauma intensive care units, coronary care units, cardiothoracic intensive care units, burns unit, paediatrics and some trauma centre emergency departments. As a Nurse, these specialists generally take care of critically ill patients who require mechanical ventilation by way of endotracheal intubation and titratable vasoactive intravenous medications.

Emergency Nursing

Emergency Nursing is a speciality within the field of professional Nurse focusing on the care of patients with medical emergencies, those who require prompt medical attention to avoid long-term disability or death. Emergency nurses are most frequently employed in hospital emergency departments (EDs), although they may also work in urgent care centres, sports arenas, and on medical transport helicopters and ambulances.

Tips to Create an Irresistible Resume

Nowadays humans don’t have to read all resumes; they have their reading robots, would read it for them. Therefore, I have put together top five tips that we’ve compiled over the past years to help you optimise your resume like it will make it through the robots and onto the desk of a recruiter.

In any program, the AI or ATS could add specific keywords and make it as a command to shortlist the resume that has the specific keyword or keywords only and also add a command to look for a disqualifying statement.

For example, you have a degree, but they need to recruit a person with a post-graduation, or you have one year experience, but they are looking for someone with three years of experience.

Most importantly, the ways to shortlisted your resume by artificial intelligence (AI) is, to add keywords in your resume that is related to the specific job post; which means, the words that are in the advertised job itself. However, You can add anything to do with employer mission, vision, values and specific words that they are used in their job posting.

Staff Nurse Resume Keywords

I hope you are aware of the need to include keywords into your resume. I will tell you a bit more of employer’s perspective and what they look for, the resume reading robots and, applicant tracking software or ATS.

For example, you have a degree, but they need to recruit a person with a post-graduation, or you have one year experience, but they are looking for someone with three years of experience.

Most importantly, the ways to shortlisted your resume by artificial intelligence (AI) is, to add keywords in your resume that is related to the specific job post; which means, the words that are in the advertised job itself. However, You can add anything to do with the employer mission, vision, values and specific words that they are used in their job posting.

Nurse Career Objective or Professional Summary

Most of the resumes have objective statements, and it takes a viable space on your resume. Honestly speaking this is super outdated. However, an objective statement that says you know something, what is your objective is to become a Staff nurse in any speciality area which you might have achieved through your studies or clinical practice is a minimum criterion for you for that role. So why would you even narrate it on your resume.

We encourage all the candidate to write a professional summary on their resume. It can be in bullet points format or in three to four sentences. Basically, it is a snapshot of who you are as a nurse in the healthcare profession.

The employers only care about what you can do for them; they don’t care about what you want to do. They want evidence of what you have done in the past and how you can do it for them with the least training possible in the coming future. Therefore, load your resume with keywords from employers job posting templates and tell them why you are qualified for the specific role they have advertised.

Staff Nurse Jobs Specifics

In your resume try not to use vague general statements, list specifics about only the actual jobs you are doing, or where you are sitting.

During the interview process, all employers want to make sure that you have tradeable and transferable skills. Moreover, you are the right candidate they are looking for to fit into their speciality hospital with all the necessary qualities and similar experience you have gained from your previous employment. Therefore, it is vital for you to narrate in your resume the cases you have handled, different professionals you work with as a health care team to achieve specific goals, medications you have administered, the specific type of therapies you are trained at, or you are excellent in.

Your resume should also reflect your actual potentials to impress the employer. It should include your designation, your actual day to day work, kind of cases you have handled, type of specialised equipment used, kind of patients you are taking care of, what is your area of speciality, medications administered for special treatments from the routine, different routes of drug administration you are expert in etc.

Furthermore, you should explain about you care setting; is it a hospital, teaching hospital, care centre, trauma care hospital, specialities available, what morgue in use in your care settings, Electronic Medical Recording (EMR) system in use if applicable, number of beds in the hospital, number of beds in your area of practice, nurse-patient ratio, and policies and procedures in place for the safe practice.

Staff Nurse Simple Format Resume

Try to keep your resume as simple as possible. Most of the artificial intelligence or application tracking software (ATS) ignore or block the kind of resume with colours, images, special fonts or fancy graphics. Always use simple black colour fonts and write your resume in Arial or Times New Roman. Put more focus on proofreading and in spell checks rather than choosing a fancy font.

Staff Nurse Career Opportunity Worldwide

Nursing is one of the most consistent and fastest-growing professions in the world, and you can find some relevant and useful overviews about the nursing career in below infographics. For pertinent references or in-depth study on the subject, please go through the link. Do you know or ever thought What Percentage of Nurses Works in Hospitals?, How many nurses are there in the world 2018? and Which nursing speciality pays the most?

Nursing Career Outlook in India

According to an India Spend analysis of data from the Indian Nursing Council (INC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), India is short of 1.94 million nurses, and the critical shortage of nurses–attributable to low recruitment, nurses migration, increase in the number of patents, awareness of should access to the healthcare services in need and being healthy are some of the reasons for the growth of demand of healthcare professionals. Overall, nurses will have immense job opportunities in the future.