Wednesday 24 April 2013

Your Life on Paper-Emergency Physician CV

By Amy Cline


A CV or curriculum vitae (literally course of life" in Latin) gives employers their first real in-depth examination of the professional accomplishments of an emergency medicine physician. Even if these employers have already spoken to you on the phone, actually viewing your professional background on paper can be a make-or-break moment in your job search process. CV information is critical to any hospital or ER management group looking to hire physicians skilled in the science and art of this specialty.

Think of your physician CV as a book that tells a story about you. Employers are hiring the "person" not the skill-set. This vital document should give a potential employer a sense of who you are as a professional and as a person. When preparing your physician CV include more than where you went to school, where you completed your residency or even what professional achievements you have attained.

When preparing your CV it is important to include your skills, hobbies, and personal strengths, beyond your clinical ability. Take care not to clutter up your physician CV with trivial personal strenghts. The focus should be on anything that could credibly add value in the employer's opinion. Good examples of this would be adding any foreign languages you speak fluently, computer skills or even public speaking abilities. Depending on the physician job you are seeking or the level of technology in the emergency room, it doesn't take much to realize how important mentioning these items can be.

However, other less quantifiable skills and traits could also give you an edge over other candidates. For example, how is your bedside manner? If you're especially gifted at putting patients at ease, you could conceivably be able to treat more patients during a shift because they will communicate their symptom more quickly and completely, enabling a faster diagnosis. Are you especially detail-oriented? If so, you will be highly-valued as a good record keeper, especially important in documenting your work with regulatory agencies.

Don't overplay these ancillary traits; a simple bullet point outlining the personality strength and how it would positively impact your job performance in the emergency room will suffice.

From there, you might want to include a paragraph on a single professional accomplishment, such as being selected as ER Physician of the Year" for the previous year, or chosen to be a speaker at an ACEP Scientific Assembly. Whatever it is, make sure it's important enough to highlight before your professional credentials. (If it isn't noteworthy enough, include the honor at the bottom of your CV, where they're traditionally listed.)

If you're unsure whether the honor is important enough, or if you're uncertain about your CV in general, you should consider having it reviewed by a physician staffing firm, preferably one that is experienced in matching emergency medicine physicians with hospital and specialty group employers. These professional physician recruiters have seen literally thousands of emergency medicine CVs over the years and know what kind of information carries more weight with employers and which should be relegated to lower positions on the page. (They may even advise leaving some information out of the CV entirely.)

The services offered by physician recruiting firms are free to physicians and can often times lead to your dream physician job.




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