ResumeProofed

Keyword Atlas · Healthcare · No 01

RegisteredNurse
resume keywords.

The words hiring systems and registered nurse hiring managers actually look for, drawn from the U.S. Department of Labor occupational database and the bodies that certify this field. Sourced, dated, and checked by machine.

LIVE SCAN · REGISTERED-NURSE.PROFILE
Administered medications to 30+ patients daily with zero reportable errors across 18 months
Charted assessments and care plans in Epic Systems; built 2 unit templates adopted hospital-wide
Active RN license, State Board of Nursing, in good standing since 2019
$97,550
Median pay, yearly
BLS OEWS (via api.bls.gov) · OEWS 2025
5%faster than average
Growth 2024 to 2034
BLS Employment Projections (via O*NET OnLine, DOL/ETA, CC BY 4.0)
189,100
Openings per year
BLS Employment Projections (via O*NET OnLine, DOL/ETA, CC BY 4.0) · 2024-2034
3.39M
Employed, 2024
BLS OEWS/Employment Projections (via O*NET OnLine, DOL/ETA, CC BY 4.0) · 2024

The keywords

Grouped, sourced, ready to use.

Tap any keyword to see exactly where it comes from and how to use it in a real bullet.

vital signs monitoring
O*NET 29-1141.00 · Task ID 1841 · CC BY 4.0

Skill mix

What the role actually weighs.

Psychology 4.3Customer and Personal Service 3.9Medicine and Dentistry 3.2English Language 2.7Administrative 2.7Mathematics 2.4

People skills outrank clinical knowledge in the data.

Federal knowledge ratings for registered nurses rank Psychology above Medicine and Dentistry, with Customer and Personal Service close behind. That is not a sign clinical skill matters less; it is a sign patient interaction, judgment, and service consistently rate as the harder-to-teach differentiators. Lead your keywords with clinical hard skills, but do not starve the interpersonal ones.

O*NET® 29-1141.00, knowledge ratings (Level 0-7 normalized to a 0-5 display scale) · CC BY 4.0

Wage terrain

Where the salaries actually sit.

90th pct
$137,470
75th pct
$112,350
MEDIAN
$97,550
25th pct
$80,330
10th pct
$68,940
BLS OEWS percentile annual wages, 2025 release, national, SOC 29-1141 (via api.bls.gov, BLS Public Data API v2).

Placement

Where each keyword belongs.

Summary

Title, years, one certification, one specialty. Densest keyword real estate on the page.

Registered Nurse with 6 years in acute care, BLS and ACLS certified

Experience bullets

Hard skills and tools, each attached to an outcome with a number.

Reduced average discharge planning time by 20% after redesigning the unit's handoff checklist

Skills section

Exact-phrase matching for screening software. Mirror the job posting's own wording.

patient assessment · IV therapy · triage

Cover letter

One or two signature keywords woven into a story. Never a list.

...led our unit's infection control response...

The receipts

Claims we checked for you.

75% of resumes are rejected by ATS before a human ever sees them.NO PRIMARY SOURCE
Traces to a claim by Preptel, a resume-services vendor that closed in 2013. No methodology was ever published and no supporting study exists. Ignore anyone citing this number.
Employers admit their screening systems filter out qualified candidates who don't match a job posting's exact wording.VERIFIED · HBS 2021
88% of surveyed executives said exactly this in Harvard Business School and Accenture's Hidden Workers: Untapped Talent report (2021), a survey of 2,275 executives. It is the primary reason exact keyword phrasing matters more than volume.

Asked constantly

Registered Nurse resume questions, answered straight.

How many keywords should I include on a nursing resume?

No verified universal number exists. The stronger practice is mirroring the specific terms in the job posting itself, prioritizing hard clinical skills, the employer's EHR system, and your active certifications, over hitting a target count.

Should I list both "RN" and "Registered Nurse" on my resume?

Yes. Spell out the full title at least once and use "RN" elsewhere. Screening software matches phrasing literally, so covering both forms closes a possible gap.

Do certifications like BLS and ACLS count as resume keywords?

Yes. List them by name, spelled out and abbreviated on first use, since employers and screening software both search for the exact terms.

What EHR software keywords matter most for nursing ATS systems?

Epic Systems and MEDITECH software are both flagged as O*NET Hot Technologies for this occupation, meaning current job-posting demand for them is elevated. Name the exact system you used, not just "EHR experience."

Sources on this page

  1. O*NET 30.3 Database (May 2026 Release), U.S. Department of Labor / ETA, occupation 29-1141.00. Used under CC BY 4.0.
  2. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), SOC 29-1141, 2025 release. Public domain. Retrieved via api.bls.gov, BLS Public Data API v2.
  3. O*NET OnLine (onetonline.org), Wages & Employment Trends panel for 29-1141.00, republishing BLS Employment Projections. U.S. DOL/ETA, CC BY 4.0. Retrieved 2026-08-15T12:11:57Z.
  4. National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) and American Heart Association, certification and licensure registries.
  5. Harvard Business School and Accenture, Hidden Workers: Untapped Talent, 2021.
every number dated · every source fetched and machine-checked before publish