A medical CV is a different document from a commercial one. It is longer, it is structured by convention rather than by preference, and it is read by clinicians who know exactly what should be in it and in what order. Applying a two-page business CV template to a medical application signals unfamiliarity with the field before a word is read.
The conventions exist because medical selection is largely scored. Applications to training programmes are assessed against published person specifications with points for degrees, publications, presentations, audit, teaching and quality improvement. The CV should make each of those easy to find, which is why medical CVs carry section headings that would look excessive elsewhere.
Registration is the other non-negotiable. Your registration status, the regulator and your registration number where appropriate belong near the top. For international applicants, the position on registration and on any required examinations should be stated plainly rather than left for the reader to infer.
Everything on a medical CV must be exactly true. Clinical claims are checkable through references, logbooks and portfolios, and a discrepancy is a fitness to practise matter rather than a recruitment one. Where this guide suggests wording, it is wording for describing experience you have, not for implying experience you do not.
This example is written for a doctor two years post-graduation who has completed a house job and is applying for a training post.
Opens in the editor with this content already filled in, so you can replace it with your own.
Aditya Rao
MBBS · Foundation-Level Doctor
aditya.rao@example.com
+91 98450 55276
Bengaluru, India
Profile
MBBS graduate (2023) with a completed house job across General Medicine, General Surgery, Paediatrics and Obstetrics and Gynaecology. Experience managing ward caseloads under consultant supervision, a completed two-cycle audit on surgical antibiotic prophylaxis, one published case report and regular bedside teaching for final-year students. Seeking a training post in Internal Medicine.
Medical Registration
August 2023
Registered Medical Practitioner (permanent registration)
State Medical Council
Registration number available on request
Medical Education
August 2017 – June 2023
MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery)
Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences · Bengaluru, India
▪Distinction in Pathology and Community Medicine.
▪Institute prize for the best undergraduate research project, 2022.
First Class
Clinical Experience
September 2024 – Present
Junior Resident (Non-Academic), Internal Medicine
Cauvery General Hospital · Bengaluru, India
▪Manage a ward caseload of 14 to 18 inpatients under consultant supervision, including daily review, investigation planning and discharge summaries.
▪Cover the medical admissions unit on a one-in-five rota, performing initial assessment and escalating to the registrar using SBAR handover.
▪Lead daily family updates on a 28-bed medical ward and have participated in three end-of-life care discussions alongside the consultant.
▪Present at the weekly departmental mortality and morbidity meeting on a rotating basis.
July 2023 – June 2024
House Officer (Compulsory Rotating Internship)
Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital · Bengaluru, India
▪Completed the full 12-month rotating internship across four core specialties and two shorter attachments.
▪Responsible for daily ward documentation, phlebotomy rounds, cannulation and preparation of patients for theatre and investigations.
▪Maintained a supervised procedure logbook countersigned by the responsible consultant in each rotation.
Clinical Rotations
July 2023 – September 2023
General Medicine
Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital · Bengaluru, India
▪Three months. Managed a ward caseload of 12 to 15 inpatients under consultant supervision.
▪Clerked acute admissions including diabetic ketoacidosis, community-acquired pneumonia and acute coronary syndrome presentations.
▪Performed venepuncture, cannulation and arterial blood gas sampling independently after supervised sign-off.
Dr S. Krishnamurthy, Consultant Physician
October 2023 – December 2023
General Surgery
Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital · Bengaluru, India
▪Three months. Assisted in approximately 40 general surgical procedures including open and laparoscopic appendicectomy and hernia repair.
▪Performed wound closure and suture removal under direct supervision.
▪Managed post-operative ward care including fluid balance, analgesia review and drain management under supervision.
Dr M. Venkatesh, Consultant Surgeon
January 2024 – March 2024
Paediatrics
Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital · Bengaluru, India
▪Three months. Clerked paediatric admissions including bronchiolitis, gastroenteritis and febrile convulsions.
▪Attended the neonatal unit twice weekly and observed neonatal resuscitation in accordance with unit protocol.
▪Counselled families on discharge safety-netting under supervision.
Dr R. Prasanna, Consultant Paediatrician
April 2024 – June 2024
Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital · Bengaluru, India
▪Three months. Attended antenatal and gynaecology outpatient clinics and assisted in caesarean sections.
▪Observed and assisted at approximately 25 normal vaginal deliveries under midwifery and obstetric supervision.
▪Maintained partogram documentation and performed post-natal ward reviews under supervision.
Dr A. Lakshmi, Consultant Obstetrician
May 2024 – June 2024
Emergency Medicine (attachment)
Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital · Bengaluru, India
▪Six-week concurrent attachment. Assisted with triage support and initial assessment of ambulatory presentations.
▪Performed ECG recording and interpretation with senior review.
Practical ProceduresVenepuncture and cannulation, Arterial blood gas sampling, Urethral catheterisation, Nasogastric tube insertion, Basic suturing, ECG interpretation
Ward and Emergency CareWard round documentation, Supervised prescribing, Fluid and electrolyte management, Basic life support
Professional PracticeSupervised consent discussions, Multidisciplinary team working, Incident reporting, Clinical governance
AcademicClinical audit, Quality improvement methodology, Literature review, Case report writing, Bedside teaching
Audit & Quality Improvement
Two-cycle audit: timing of surgical antibiotic prophylaxis
Lead auditor
▪Audited 120 elective general surgical cases against local guidance requiring administration within 60 minutes of incision.
▪First cycle found 41% of doses given outside the recommended window, most commonly where the patient was sent for early.
▪Introduced a prompt on the theatre safety checklist with the anaesthetic team; re-audit at four months showed compliance at 86% (n=95).
▪Presented at the departmental clinical governance meeting, March 2024.
Audit: completeness of discharge summaries in Internal Medicine
Co-auditor
▪Reviewed 80 discharge summaries against six required elements defined in hospital policy.
▪Found medication changes documented in 62% of summaries; findings fed into a template revision now in use.
▪First cycle complete; re-audit scheduled.
Publications
November 2024
Delayed presentation of thyrotoxic periodic paralysis in a young adult: a case report
Rao, A., Krishnamurthy, S. · Journal of Clinical Case Studies (India)
Presentations & Conferences
October 2024
National Conference of Internal Medicine
Poster presenter · Hyderabad, India
Poster: two-cycle audit on surgical antibiotic prophylaxis timing.
February 2024
State Chapter Annual Medical Update
Delegate · Bengaluru, India
Sessions on acute coronary syndrome management and antimicrobial stewardship.
Certifications & Courses
March 2024
Basic Life Support (BLS) Provider
American Heart Association
expires March 2026
May 2024
Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS) Provider
American Heart Association
expires May 2026
September 2023
Good Clinical Practice (GCP)
NIDA Clinical Trials Network
Teaching Experience
October 2023 – June 2024
Bedside Teaching Facilitator
Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences · Bengaluru, India
▪Delivered a weekly bedside teaching session for final-year students over two rotations, covering history taking and arterial blood gas interpretation.
▪Mean feedback score 4.6 of 5 across 22 responses.
Professional Memberships
September 2023 – Present
Indian Medical Association
Member
January 2024 – Present
Association of Physicians of India
Associate Member
Volunteer Experience
November 2023 – Present
Volunteer Doctor
Rural Health Outreach Camp · Ramanagara District, India
▪Attend a monthly outreach camp providing screening for hypertension and diabetes in villages without a resident physician.
▪Screened approximately 400 attendees over 12 camps and arranged onward referral for those with newly identified disease.
Languages
EnglishC2
KannadaNative
HindiC1
TamilB1
References
References available on request.
MBBS Doctor example on the Clinical Classic layout. All details are fictional and shown for demonstration only.
What recruiters expect
Before writing anything, it helps to know what the person reading is checking for. In this field that is usually a short, specific list:
Registration status and regulator stated near the top, with the registration number where it is normal practice to give it.
Medical education with the institution, dates, and any distinctions or prizes.
Clinical posts in reverse chronological order, with the grade, the specialty, the unit and the supervising consultant where appropriate.
Rotations listed individually with duration - selection panels count months in specialty.
Audit and quality improvement, ideally showing a completed cycle rather than a single data collection.
Research, publications, presentations and teaching, because these carry explicit points in most scoring systems.
Life support certification with the current expiry date.
Recommended CV structure
This is the running order the example uses. It is a starting point rather than a rule, but the order reflects what tends to be read first in this profession.
Profile — Three or four lines positioning you for the role.
Medical Registration — Practising licences and regulator registrations.
Medical Education — Degrees, diplomas and school-leaving qualifications.
Clinical Experience — Paid roles, in reverse chronological order.
Clinical Rotations — Specialty rotations with dates and supervising unit.
Core Clinical Competencies — Grouped skills, for example "Languages" and "Tooling".
Audit & Quality Improvement — Research projects, studies and audits.
Publications — Papers, articles and posters, in your citation style.
Presentations & Conferences — Talks given and conferences attended.
Certifications & Courses — Completed certifications with the issuing body.
Teaching Experience — Lecturing, demonstrating and supervision.
Professional Memberships — Bodies you belong to, with membership numbers where relevant.
Volunteer Experience — Unpaid roles that show relevant skills.
Languages — Spoken languages with CEFR levels.
References — Referees, or a line saying they are available on request.
Sections worth adding
Prizes & Awards — Academic prizes and distinctions carry explicit points in several training application scoring systems.
Additional Training — Use for structured courses that are not certifications, such as leadership or simulation programmes.
Skills worth including
Grouped rather than listed in one block. Grouping makes a long list readable and shows that you can tell the difference between the things you use daily and the things you have touched.
Clinical Assessment
History taking · Systemic examination · Differential diagnosis · Acutely unwell patient assessment · Escalation and handover (SBAR)
Practical Procedures
Venepuncture and cannulation · Arterial blood gas sampling · Urethral catheterisation · Nasogastric tube insertion · Suturing · ECG interpretation
Ward and Emergency Care
Ward round documentation · Prescribing under supervision · Fluid and electrolyte management · Basic and immediate life support · Triage support
Professional Practice
Informed consent discussions · Breaking bad news · Multidisciplinary team working · Clinical governance · Incident reporting
Academic
Clinical audit · Quality improvement methodology · Literature review · Case report writing · Teaching medical students
Beyond the technical list: Communication with distressed relatives, Working under sustained pressure, Handover discipline, Recognising the limits of your competence, Team working across nursing and allied health. These belong inside your experience bullets, demonstrated, rather than in a list of adjectives.
Example professional summary
Three or four lines, positioned for the role rather than describing your personality. Two versions you can adapt:
MBBS graduate (2023) with a completed house job across General Medicine, General Surgery, Paediatrics and Obstetrics and Gynaecology. Experience managing ward caseloads under consultant supervision, a completed two-cycle audit on surgical antibiotic prophylaxis, one published case report and regular bedside teaching for final-year students. Currently registered and licensed to practise, seeking a training post in Internal Medicine.
Foundation-level doctor with 18 months of post-graduation clinical experience across acute medicine and emergency care. Interests in quality improvement and medical education, with two audits completed to re-measurement and a poster presented at a national conference.
Writing your experience
The difference between a CV that gets a call and one that does not is almost always in the bullet points. Each pair below shows a real rewrite of the kind of line that appears on most CVs in this field.
Weak
Worked in the medical ward.
Stronger
General Medicine, 3 months: managed a ward caseload of 12 to 15 inpatients under consultant supervision, including daily review, investigation planning and discharge documentation.
Specialty, duration, caseload and level of supervision - the four facts a clinical reviewer needs.
Weak
Carried out an audit on antibiotic prescribing.
Stronger
Completed a two-cycle audit of surgical antibiotic prophylaxis timing against local guidelines (n=120), which found 41% of doses given outside the recommended window; after a theatre checklist prompt was introduced, re-audit at four months showed compliance at 86%.
A closed audit loop with a sample size, a baseline, an intervention and a re-measurement.
Weak
Assisted in surgical procedures.
Stronger
Assisted in approximately 40 general surgical procedures including open and laparoscopic appendicectomy and hernia repair, and performed wound closure under direct supervision.
Accurate about the role: assisting versus performing, and the supervision level for each.
Weak
Good communication skills with patients.
Stronger
Led daily family updates on a 28-bed medical ward and participated in three end-of-life care discussions alongside the consultant, with structured feedback recorded in my portfolio.
Replaces an unverifiable claim with documented, supervised practice.
Weak
Taught medical students.
Stronger
Delivered a weekly bedside teaching session for final-year students over two rotations, covering history taking and ABG interpretation; mean feedback score 4.6 of 5 across 22 responses.
Teaching is scored in most training applications, and feedback data makes the claim concrete.
Taken from the example
The sample CV for this profession is fully written. A few sections from it, so you can see the level of specificity that works:
Experience
Junior Resident (Non-Academic), Internal Medicine, Cauvery General Hospital
Manage a ward caseload of 14 to 18 inpatients under consultant supervision, including daily review, investigation planning and discharge summaries.
Cover the medical admissions unit on a one-in-five rota, performing initial assessment and escalating to the registrar using SBAR handover.
Lead daily family updates on a 28-bed medical ward and have participated in three end-of-life care discussions alongside the consultant.
Present at the weekly departmental mortality and morbidity meeting on a rotating basis.
Rotations
General Medicine — Three months. Managed a ward caseload of 12 to 15 inpatients under consultant supervision.
General Surgery — Three months. Assisted in approximately 40 general surgical procedures including open and laparoscopic appendicectomy and hernia repair.
Paediatrics — Three months. Clerked paediatric admissions including bronchiolitis, gastroenteritis and febrile convulsions.
Audit and research
Two-cycle audit: timing of surgical antibiotic prophylaxis — Audited 120 elective general surgical cases against local guidance requiring administration within 60 minutes of incision.
Audit: completeness of discharge summaries in Internal Medicine — Reviewed 80 discharge summaries against six required elements defined in hospital policy.
Education
MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery), Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences — First Class
Certifications and registration
Registered Medical Practitioner (permanent registration) — State Medical Council
Basic Life Support (BLS) Provider — American Heart Association
Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS) Provider — American Heart Association
Good Clinical Practice (GCP) — NIDA Clinical Trials Network
Common mistakes
Compressing a medical CV to two pages
Medical CVs are expected to run to four pages or more. Cutting rotations, audit and teaching to fit a business template removes the material selection panels are scoring.
Rotations without duration
Panels count months in specialty. "Paediatrics rotation" is worth far less than "Paediatrics, 3 months (July to September 2024)".
Audit presented as data collection
A completed audit cycle - standard, measurement, change, re-measurement - scores considerably higher than a single snapshot. If you closed the loop, say so explicitly.
Overstating procedural independence
There is a real difference between performing a procedure under direct supervision, under indirect supervision and independently. Use the correct term; your logbook and referees will be consulted.
Implying registration or certification not held
Registration status, licence to practise and examination progress are all verifiable. State exactly where you are, including "provisionally registered" or "examination booked for March 2026".
Patient-identifiable detail in case descriptions
Never include information that could identify a patient. Describe presentations in general terms, as you would in a teaching context.
ATS considerations
Applicant tracking systems behave differently by sector, and generic advice is often wrong for a given field. These points are specific to mbbs doctor applications:
Medical recruitment often uses structured application forms rather than CV parsing, but the CV is still read directly. Keep it single column and avoid tables that will not copy cleanly into an application form.
Write "MBBS" and "Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery" both, because international recruiters search for the expanded form.
Spell out specialty names in full: "Obstetrics and Gynaecology" rather than "O&G".
Give life support certifications with the awarding body and expiry date, since expired certification is a common screening failure.
Include the registration number where it is normal in your jurisdiction to do so; it lets a recruiter verify you immediately.
The Minimal ATS layout is built for this, and the ATS guide covers what parsers do to a file in more detail.
Questions about mbbs doctor CVs
How long should a medical CV be?
Four to six pages is normal early in a career and longer for consultants. The convention is completeness rather than brevity, because panels are scoring specific categories.
Should I list every rotation separately?
Yes, with dates and duration. Selection processes count months in specialty, so a merged block loses you credit you have actually earned.
How do I present audit work?
Give the standard you audited against, the sample size, the baseline finding, the change you introduced and the re-audit result. A single-cycle audit should be described as such rather than implied to be complete.
What if I have no publications?
Include what you do have: posters, oral presentations, case reports submitted, audit presented at a departmental meeting. These are legitimate academic output and are scored in most systems.
How should international graduates present registration?
State your current registration and jurisdiction, then your position on the registration route for the country you are applying to, including any examinations passed, booked or outstanding. Ambiguity here delays applications more than an incomplete route does.
Should I include references on a medical CV?
Yes. Medical CVs conventionally name two or three clinical referees, usually consultants who have supervised you, with their post and contact details. Ask permission first.