Medical CV example for doctors

What the CV does when the form carries the scoring

Doctors in training apply for specialty posts through a national recruitment process, not by sending a CV to a hospital. The online application, your portfolio and, for some specialties, the Multi-Specialty Recruitment Assessment do most of the sorting. So why keep a medical CV at all? Because interview panels often ask for one, locum agencies and trust grade posts want one, fellowships and posts abroad ask for one, and it is the single document where your whole career sits in order. When you fill in an application form, you copy from it.

That changes how you write it. The CV has to agree with your portfolio line by line: the same audit titles, the same dates, the same authorship order on the poster. A panel member who spots a mismatch will ask about it, and not kindly.

The registration line

Under your name, give your grade and your registration: "FY2 doctor, full GMC registration with a licence to practise". Registration and the licence are separate things, and employers need both for clinical work, so name both. You can add your GMC reference number or write "available on request"; the employer checks the online register either way. If you are an international medical graduate still working towards registration, say exactly where you are in the process rather than leaving it vague.

Set out your posts by rotation

The Foundation Programme is two years of rotating posts after medical school, and the panel wants to see each one. List them newest first, with the specialty, the type of hospital or practice, and the months. One heading per foundation year keeps it readable, with the rotations as lines beneath.

Under each rotation, write one or two lines of substance rather than a job description. What did you manage on your own? Did you run the ward on a long day, clerk on the medical take, lead the handover, assist in theatre, manage an acutely unwell patient overnight with a registrar on the phone? Those details tell a panel how ready you are for the next level of responsibility. Procedures belong in your logbook and portfolio; the CV can name the ones the specialty cares about.

Audit and quality improvement

Every foundation doctor has joined an audit. Fewer have seen one through. Panels look for the full cycle: you measured practice against a standard, made a change, then re-audited to see whether it worked. Give the title, the standard you measured against (a national guideline, say, or a trust policy), your role, what you changed, and where you presented it. If the second cycle has not happened yet, say when it is due. A small project you led and closed is worth more than a large one where your name was fourth.

Quality improvement projects follow the same logic with a different method, often plan-do-study-act cycles. Name the method you used. Specialty person specifications often ask for evidence of involvement in audit or QI, and the wording of your CV should make that evidence easy to find.

Teaching, presentations and publications

Teaching counts when it is regular and has some shape. "Delivered weekly bedside teaching to third-year medical students on the respiratory ward, with written feedback collected" beats "involved in teaching". If you designed a session, organised a programme or hold a teaching qualification, list it.

For presentations and publications, use a consistent reference style and be exact about authorship and level: local, regional, national or international, oral or poster. Most foundation doctors have few or none, and that is normal. Do not pad the section with "submitted" or "in preparation" work that may never appear; if you include a submission, label it clearly. An honest short list reads better than an inflated long one, and interviewers will ask you about anything you put there.

Courses and life support

List ALS with the date you passed, then courses that match the specialty: a basic surgical skills course for surgical training, a simulation or acute medicine course for medical training, a teaching course if you want to show commitment to education. Leave out mandatory trust e-learning. Prizes, distinctions and an intercalated degree go under education.

Leadership and management

Foundation doctors rarely manage anyone, so panels look for smaller signs. Did you write the junior doctor rota, sit on a trust committee as the foundation representative, set up a teaching programme or run a mess event that needed a budget? One line each, with what you organised and who it helped. If you have none, a single well-described QI project often covers the same criteria.

Reading the specialty person specification

Each specialty publishes a person specification that sets the entry criteria and the qualities the panel is looking for. Print it and mark every line against your CV. Where it asks for commitment to the specialty, give the taster week, the elective, the society or the course that proves it. Where it lists leadership, find the rota you organised or the committee you sat on. Then reorder your sections so the evidence for that specialty comes first.

Small things that cost you at interview

• Dates that do not match your portfolio or your application form.
• Claiming to have led an audit you contributed data to.
• Patient-identifiable details in a case you describe, even initials and ages together.
• A long list of hobbies with no link to the qualities the specialty wants.
• A photo, date of birth or marital status. UK medical CVs leave them off.

The salary box on this page uses the National Careers Service figures for hospital doctors, which run from £40,000 for a doctor early in training to £145,000 for an experienced consultant. Resident doctors are paid on national scales by stage of training.