We have already published a guide to the nurse CV and a separate guide to the medical assistant CV. This is a third document for a third job, and treating it as a trimmed-down version of either one is the fastest way to write a CV that gets skipped.
A nursing assistant - CNA in the United States, healthcare assistant or care assistant in the UK, aide-soignant in France, auxiliar de enfermeria in Spain - is usually certificate-qualified or trained on the job rather than degree-qualified. The work is hands-on personal care: washing, dressing, feeding, toileting, transfers, repositioning, skin checks, vitals, observation and reporting. That is not the clinical procedure work a nurse is licensed for, and it is not the administrative and clinic-flow half of a medical assistant's day either. The setting is different again. Most of these jobs sit in long-term care, residential and nursing homes, rehabilitation and memory care units, and home health, not on an acute hospital ward and not in a physician's office.
Those differences change the document. A nurse CV leads with licence and clinical specialism. A medical assistant CV leads with back-office and front-office competence. A nursing assistant CV leads with the certificate, the caseload you can actually carry, and when you can work.
Put the certificate line above the fold
For most employers in this sector, the first question is not whether you are good. It is whether you are legally allowed to start on Monday. In the US that means an active listing on the state nurse aide registry. In the UK it is more likely a Care Certificate and a clean DBS check. In France it is the state diploma or a training attestation. Whatever your system calls it, that line does not belong in an education section at the bottom of page two.
Put it directly under your name and contact details, on its own line, in plain text. Something like: Certified Nursing Assistant, Ohio Nurse Aide Registry #123456, active through March 2027 - BLS/CPR certified (AHA), valid through August 2027.
Then add the credentials that remove friction: first aid, dementia care training, manual handling or safe transfer certification, food hygiene, medication administration if your jurisdiction allows it for assistants. If a certificate is in progress, say so with a date. "CNA certification, state exam scheduled 12 November" is a usable answer. Silence is not.
Make routine care read as skilled work, without inflating it
The trap on this CV is that the duties are the same for everyone, so people either list them flatly or reach for language that does not belong to them. "Administered medication" on a CV where the role does not permit it gets you screened out by someone who knows the scope better than you do.
The honest middle is specificity. Personal care is skilled: it involves sequencing, observation, documentation and judgement about when to escalate. Write the judgement part, not just the task. "Assisted with personal hygiene" describes a task. "Completed morning personal care for 12 residents, flagging two pressure-area changes to the charge nurse the same shift" describes someone the charge nurse wants on the rota.
Cover the things a care manager screens for: activities of daily living, mobility and transfers, continence care, feeding and swallowing precautions, vital signs, intake and output charting, repositioning schedules, falls prevention, end-of-life care if you have done it, and whichever electronic record you used - PointClickCare, Nourish, Person Centred Software. Naming the system matters more than people expect, because it shortens training.
The two numbers a care manager actually reads
Most quantification on this CV is decorative. Two numbers are not.
The first is your patient load per shift. A hiring manager reading "12 to 15 residents on days, 20 on nights" instantly knows whether you can handle their floor. Give the range honestly, and say which shift it applied to, because the ratios differ.
The second is facility size and type. "96-bed skilled nursing facility with a 24-bed locked memory care unit" tells a reader more than five lines of adjectives. Add acuity markers where they are true: number of two-person transfers, mechanical lift use, residents on hospice, tracheostomy or PEG feeding if you supported them. If you worked home health instead, the equivalent is caseload and travel: "6 to 8 clients daily across a 30-mile radius, own vehicle."
Availability is a selling point here, not a footnote
Long-term care runs 24 hours and is chronically short on nights, weekends and holidays. Somebody who states plainly that they will take nights is solving the manager's actual problem, and this is the one sector where saying so on the CV helps rather than looking desperate.
Put a short availability line near the top, under your credentials. "Available nights, weekends and alternating holidays - flexible for doubles with notice - own transport, no curfew on late finishes." If you have already worked those patterns, evidence it in the experience entries: "permanent night shift, 7pm to 7am, three 12-hour shifts per week over 18 months." Consistency on nights signals reliability better than any adjective.
Do not overpromise. If you have school pickup at 3pm on weekdays, say days only and mean it. Managers in this sector build rotas weeks out and remember who cancels.
Physical capacity and safe transfer training
The job has a physical specification, and employers know that injuries and staff turnover come from people who were never trained properly. Say what you can do and what you have been taught.
Name the equipment: Hoyer or full-body lift, sit-to-stand, slide sheets, gait belt, ceiling track hoist. Name the training: manual handling, moving and positioning, no-lift or safe-lift policy, back care. Add the practical statement employers care about: comfortable with two-person transfers, able to stand for 12-hour shifts, current on the facility's lift competency sign-off.
This is also where you quietly answer the question about attendance. If you have worked 12-hour shifts for two years with no lifting injury, that is worth a line.
Evidence the soft skills instead of claiming them
Compassion, patience and communication appear on every CV in this pile, which makes them worth nothing as claims. They are worth a lot as examples.
- Families. "Primary point of contact for families of six long-stay residents, including weekly updates and settling-in calls after admission."
- Dementia care. "Trained in Teepa Snow positive approach; reduced refusal of personal care for two residents by moving the routine to late morning after tracking their patterns."
- Dignity. Show it as method, not sentiment: how you manage privacy during care, how you offer choice, how you handle a resident who declines.
- De-escalation. "Handled agitation and exit-seeking on a locked unit using redirection and distraction; no restraint or PRN escalation required during my shifts."
Pick two or three you can defend in an interview and drop the rest.
From vague to specific
Three real rewrites, in the order people usually need them.
Before: "Responsible for daily care of residents."
After: "Delivered full personal care for 13 residents per shift on a 60-bed dementia unit, including two-person transfers and full-hoist assistance for four."
Before: "Good communication with the nursing team."
After: "Reported changes in condition at every handover; escalated a resident's reduced fluid intake on day two, which led to a UTI diagnosis before hospital admission was needed."
Before: "Helped residents with meals."
After: "Supported nine residents at each mealtime, including three on modified-texture diets, and recorded intake and output in PointClickCare for the full unit."
If you have no healthcare experience at all
This is a very common starting point, and the sector hires from it constantly. Do not apologise for it in a personal statement. Restructure instead.
Lead with the certificate and the clinical hours from your training programme, written as an experience entry rather than an education footnote: "Clinical placement, 40 hours, Meadowbrook Care Center - personal care, vitals and transfers for 8 residents per shift under CNA supervision."
Then mine your existing work history for the three things this job actually tests. Physical stamina and shift work: warehouse, kitchens, retail stock, cleaning, security. Handling people under pressure: hospitality, call centres, checkout, bar work. Unpaid caregiving for a relative counts and should be written like a job, with duration, tasks and any equipment you used. A line such as "provided daily personal care and medication reminders for a parent with Parkinson's for 26 months" is real experience, not filler.
Plain formatting, because this CV gets read by a human in a hurry
Large hospital groups run applicant tracking software. A 70-bed care home frequently does not. Your CV is often printed, read in three minutes between rounds by a director of nursing or a home manager, and put in a pile.
So: one page if you have under five years, two at most. Reverse chronological. No columns, no sidebars, no photo, no skill rating bars, no colour blocks. Black text, one clear font, headings that say what they are. Contact number at the top that you will actually answer, because this sector calls rather than emails.
Progression from here is real and worth a line if it is your plan - medication technician, restorative aide, then an LPN or RN bridge. But write the CV for the job you are applying to now. The hiring manager is filling a night shift this week, and a CV that shows you can carry 14 residents through it will beat one that reads like a career statement.