Medical CV Examples & UK Templates

As medical staff shortages continue to plague the UK healthcare system, the need to fill vacancies has never been more critical. 

But with hiring requirements no less rigorous, a stand-out medical CV is still essential to emphasise the ideal match between your talents and the desired position.

Whether you’re a junior doctor or a seasoned medical professional, having a well-crafted medical CV will ensure you land the best opportunities or take a step up the ladder.

Ready to find out about the vital signs of success in a CV? Read our guide geared specifically to medical professionals, backed by a medical CV example you can adapt to your own situation. 

CV guide for a medical CV

Improve your chance of success with Resume.io. Our guides and CV examples cover over 150 professions, and our CV builder makes creating a convincing CV easier than ever.

This CV guide and corresponding medical CV example will cover the following:

• How to write a medical CV
• Choosing the right CV format for a medical professional
• How to add your contact information
• Using summaries
• Adding your medical work experience
• Listing education and credentials
• Picking the right CV design/layout
• What the medical jobs outlook looks like, and what salary you can expect

How to write a medical CV

Few medical positions that interest you will ever be exactly alike, so no two versions of your medical CV should be identical either. What all CVs do have in common, however, is this backbone of essential components:

• The CV header
• The CV summary (aka profile or personal statement)
• The employment history section
• The CV skills section
• The education section

Before taking a closer look at each of these CV parts, let’s elaborate on why it’s important to stay focused on only one job application at a time. The content of each unique CV you create should precisely match what the hiring organisation needs and wants. In every instance, the requirements listed in the job advert will guide your customised approach. 

Presenting yourself as the best candidate is vital. Here’s how:

• Highlight accomplishments. Avoid simply listing duties and responsibilities. Facts and statistics show your impact in previous roles and provide concrete evidence of your strengths and capabilities in the medical field.
• Tailor your medical CV for every opportunity. Create a master version of your CV that you can use to create customised versions for each job application. This will allow the hiring manager to see that you have the relevant skills and experience to excel in the role and are invested in the organisation.
• Choose a clean and professional format for your CV. Avoid design-heavy formats and fancy fonts that are distracting and can negatively impact readability.
• Optimise your CV with the right keywords to ensure you get past applicant tracking systems (ATS) and your CV reaches the eye of a recruiter.

Choosing the right CV format for a medical professional

Since professional experience is usually the key medical hiring consideration, your CV should tell a story of career progress that recruiters can easily follow. That means the traditional reverse chronological format is the best way to organise your information.

Recent and relevant are often synonymous in job applications, so it makes sense to outline your work history, training and education highlights in reverse chronological order. This is also consistent with the requirements of online application systems, including NHS Jobs.

If you’re venturing into a new area requiring highly specialised expertise — perhaps research, writing or consulting — a hybrid (combination) CV format might work well. It places equal weight on skills and employment history. However, the functional CV format, where skills take precedence, is seldom appropriate for medical candidates.

Check out our CV templates if you need some inspiration and choose the format that best suits your situation. We also have many versions available as CV examples that you can review.

When deciding on the design of your medical CV, keep it simple. Hiring managers receive hundreds of CVs following a job posting, so make their life easier with a straightforward and easy to read format,

Include your contact information

Your CV header is the focal point for identifying information that hiring managers notice first and can retrieve easily when they want to get in touch. Besides visually distinguishing your CV from others, an eye-pleasing header design makes everything else on the page look inviting to read.

This impact is reinforced when your cover letter design matches, notably in the header. Here are the main things you need to include:

• Full name & title. List your full name, followed by the title of the role you are pursuing.
• Professional email address. Use an active and professional email address, such as [email protected].
• Phone number. Share the phone number you’re most likely to answer, complete with a professional voicemail message.
• Location. Hiring managers don’t need to know your full address. You can simply provide your city or general location or a ‘Willing to relocate' if applicable.
• LinkedIn. Include a link to your LinkedIn profile so employers can quickly review. Just remember to check your profile is updated. 

Don’t include:

• Personal details: Don’t include your age, date of birth, whether you’re married, or your nationality on your CV. This can lead to issues such as age discrimination.

Make use of a summary

How will your medical colleagues, healthcare teams, and patients benefit if you are hired? Off the top, your CV profile should speak to the heart of what this employer needs and values most. Your “why hire me?” appeal should reflect what you know about the place, the people and how you would fit in. From that perspective, the profile—sometimes called the summary or personal statement—is a snapshot of your most relevant and relatable qualifications.

Your summary should hit the high notes of your accomplishments via dynamic, results-oriented action statements. This doesn’t mean you need to regurgitate achievements from other sections of your CV, rather provide an overview of what makes you the medical professional to hire. For example, "Highly skilled in aesthetic dentistry, with proven success increasing patient satisfaction and retention levels."

Including action verbs is a great way to improve this section. Examples include adept, delivered, participated, strengthened, optimised, and collaborated. Unique action verbs clarify your contributions and bring a confident tone to your CV.  

After reading your profile, recruiters should feel compelled to read the rest of your CV. This is your chance to present the image of a dedicated, skilled, and successful medical professional, giving recruiters the sense that it would be a big mistake not to shortlist you for an interview.  

You can find adaptable medical CV example summaries below:

Outline your medical work experience: your pathway to success

Again, let relevance guide your decisions about what to include or omit from your employment history section. Take another look at the advertised job requirements for your best clues.

Be mindful of keywords from the same source when crafting concisely descriptive bullet points to showcase the work experience that prospective employers are most interested in. Use dynamic action verbs, not only conveying what you did, but how well you did it. 

Focus on the value and impact of your contributions and achievements, rather than merely listing job duties. Use numbers to quantify the scope of your work—patient volumes, for example—if not tangible outcomes. Avoid vague statements, such as:

• “Served as Family Medicine Physician.” 
• “Provided evidence-based primary care.”
• “Collaborate with physicians, medical professionals, and the wider team.”

Describing actions combined with positive outcomes and tangible results is going to make your work experience section more powerful and effective. Here’s how you can add some colour to these statements with specific outcomes and results:

• “Recognised as a caring, compassionate, and highly-skilled Family Medicine Physician for over 10 years, serving thousands of families in the Manchester area.”
• “Provided evidence-based primary care via in-office and tele-health visits for patients.”
• “Partnered with CCOs and provided ongoing communication regarding health initiatives and programs at London United.” 

At relatively early career stages, job applicants should be mindful of the overlap between their medical training and work history. Be sure not to overlook the work experience acquired during core medical training (CMT) and the acute common care stem (ACCS) specialist programme.

Take a look at the medical employment history CV sample below:

Include the relevant key skills that make a great medical CV

The medical skills you bring to bear are as integral to any given job application as your work experience. There will never be enough CV space to list all of the key skills you’ve devoted countless hours to learning and practising. But be sure to include core skills mentioned in the listed job description—possibly one more ATS-proofing opportunity to use keywords.

Every CV, regardless of occupation, should include a balanced mix of hard skills and soft skills. A medical CV is no exception. Some of the transferable skills the NHS deems to be especially valuable, well beyond medical school, include communication, team work, leadership, empathy, time management, initiative, problem-solving, and adaptability.

If you need some pointers on the types of skills to include on your CV, check out our CV builder that provides examples of in-demand skills as well as proficiency levels you can adjust.

Here’s what the skills box looks like in our medical CV template. 

Listing skills is straightforward, but providing tangible evidence makes a stronger impact. When crafting your medical CV, make sure to support each skill with concrete examples. Connect each key skill to a specific situation and its positive result. 

This approach will capture the attention of recruiters more effectively. For instance, in your professional profile and work experience sections, emphasise your:

• Medical expertise by sharing your success in winning the Family Medicine Physician of the Year award on three separate occasions. 
• Adaptability by mentioning your role in a special initiative to provide education and support to patients and families on healthy lifestyle choices.
• Teamwork by describing how you collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to deliver outstanding patient care.

Detail your education & relevant medical certifications

The education section of your medical CV is quite straightforward. In reverse chronological order, from highest to lowest level, simply list your medical degree and additional postgraduate training you’ve completed. Secondary school information can be omitted.

Beyond your formal qualifications, you should also list any additional training or professional development activities:

• Training and certifications. Specialty training, conferences, and workshops show you’re committed to professional development, which is highly appealing to employers.
• Awards and honours. Notable awards and accolades demonstrate that you’re a trailblazer in your chosen medical field. 
• Professional licenses and memberships. Registration with professional bodies, such as the General Medical Council and the Royal College of General Practitioners.

Check out the education section from our adaptable CV sample below:

Pick the right CV layout and design for a medical CV

Clean, crisp, and clutter-free is the right professional look for a medical CV that’s inviting to read. This is achievable without taking “scrubbed and sanitised” to the extreme:

• An orderly page layout, divided into cohesive, clearly labelled sections, ensures that recruiters can readily spot essential information in the expected location.
• Strive to optimise the white space offsetting text-dense black blocks. Sticking to the default one-inch margins takes care of this on the outer edges of the page, while adequate line and paragraph spacing allows breathing room throughout.
• Legibility should also guide your CV font choices. Stay with the same font style and size for all body text, and only one compatible style for header text and section titles.
• To alleviate any fears about a “sterile on steroids” visual vibe, a bit of creative leeway is just fine. Sparing graphic touches, and even the odd splash of colour, are an effective antidote to starkness.

For a hassle-free way to get all of the layout and design details just right, consider using one of Resume.io's field-tested CV templates with our builder tool.

Medical text-only CV example

Medical job market and outlook

Recent data from the British Medical Association (BMA) compared the number of doctors in 23 countries (England, UK and OECD nations). The average ratio for these countries is 3.7 doctors per 1,000 people. England ranks 20th on the list with a ratio of 3.21, while the UK sits at 21st with a slightly lower ratio of 3.18.

According to a BMA medical staffing report, England’s medical workforce growth is 25 years behind other OECD countries. At its current trajectory, it will take until 2046 for the NHS to catch up to the current number of practising doctors per 1,000 people. 

What type of salary you can expect as a medical professional

Medscape survey data indicates that 73% of UK doctors work only in the NHS, 4% work only in private practice, and 23% provide a mix of both practice types.

Pay grades for doctors in the NHS include:

• Doctors in training – £32,398 - £37.303 per year
• Specialty doctors – £59,175 - £95,400 per year
• Consultants – £105,504 - £139,882 per year
• General practitioners – £73,113 - £110,330 per year

Key takeaways for building a medical CV

The critical need to fill vacant medical positions in the UK takes nothing away from the hiring standards that make it essential for job candidates to have an exceptional CV. Whether you are applying through the NHS or to another hiring organisation directly, each version of your medical CV should be tailored to the employer’s specific needs.

Using a professionally-designed CV template is a hassle-free way to create a high-quality document that looks as good as it reads.