Top 12 General Practitioner Skills to Put on Your Resume
The hiring bar keeps inching up, and a general practitioner’s resume has to do more than list jobs. It should pulse with proof of real-world judgment, careful hands, and calm communication. Clinical chops matter. So do empathy, clear notes, and the quiet discipline to follow through. Put skills on display that show you treat the whole person while navigating modern health systems without friction.
General Practitioner Skills
- Patient Assessment
- EMR (Electronic Medical Records)
- Telemedicine Proficiency
- Clinical Diagnosis
- Minor Surgical Procedures
- Health Education
- Medical Coding (ICD-10)
- CPR Certified
- Vaccination Administration
- Chronic Disease Management
- Preventive Care
- E-Prescribing
1. Patient Assessment
Patient assessment is the structured process of gathering a history, performing an exam, and ordering targeted tests to understand what’s truly going on and what to do next.
Why It's Important
Good assessment sets the trajectory. It flags risk, catches red herrings, and builds a plan patients can actually follow. Everything downstream—diagnosis, treatment, safety—depends on it.
How to Improve Patient Assessment Skills
Listen like it matters: Open-ended questions first, clarifying questions later. Watch posture, affect, and pace.
Structure the history: Use a consistent framework (chief concern, HPI, PMH, meds, allergies, FH, SH, ROS) to avoid gaps.
Sharpen the exam: Practice core maneuvers, use validated tools (e.g., depression screens, pain scales), and document pertinent positives and negatives.
Think risk: Age, comorbidities, meds, and social drivers. Stratify and tailor the workup accordingly.
Close the loop: Teach-back to confirm understanding and clear next steps. Summaries reduce errors.
Focused, systematic assessment raises accuracy and patient trust in one sweep.
How to Display Patient Assessment Skills on Your Resume
2. EMR (Electronic Medical Records)
EMR/EHR systems store clinical data—diagnoses, histories, meds, allergies, labs, imaging—so the right information is available at the right moment.
Why It's Important
Fast retrieval, cleaner orders, fewer medication errors, and seamless handoffs. Documentation quality affects care quality, billing accuracy, and legal safety.
How to Improve EMR (Electronic Medical Records) Skills
Refine workflows: Build templates, favorites, and order sets that mirror your clinic flow. Fewer clicks, fewer mistakes.
Interoperate: Enable data exchange with labs, pharmacies, and other practices using recognized standards to reduce duplicate work.
Protect data: Strong passwords, role-based access, multifactor authentication, audit logs, and timely updates.
Use decision support: Alerts for allergies, dose ranges, interactions, and gaps in care—tuned to reduce alert fatigue.
Train the team: Short refreshers, tip sheets, and super-user support keep adoption high and errors low.
Well-tuned records systems save time and catch problems early.
How to Display EMR (Electronic Medical Records) Skills on Your Resume
3. Telemedicine Proficiency
Telemedicine proficiency means delivering safe, effective care over video or phone, using remote-friendly exam techniques and clear digital communication.
Why It's Important
Patients get timely access, chronic care stays on track, and urgent issues can be triaged fast. Continuity without the commute.
How to Improve Telemedicine Proficiency Skills
Master the tech: Test audio, video, lighting, and peripherals. Have backup contact methods ready.
Adapt the exam: Guide patients through self-exams, use symptom checklists, and know what requires in-person follow-up.
Mind the rules: Confirm licensing, consent, documentation, and privacy requirements for your region and payers.
Connect quickly: Warm introductions, confirm identity, set an agenda, and summarize decisions before ending.
Triage smartly: Clear criteria for urgent escalation, imaging, labs, or in-office evaluation.
Great virtual visits feel surprisingly human—and clinically solid.
How to Display Telemedicine Proficiency Skills on Your Resume
4. Clinical Diagnosis
Clinical diagnosis is the art and science of turning symptoms and signs into a ranked differential, then testing that list until the answer holds.
Why It's Important
Right diagnosis, right treatment. It prevents unnecessary tests, catches danger early, and reduces repeat visits for the same unsolved problem.
How to Improve Clinical Diagnosis Skills
Use pretest probability: Think in likelihoods, not absolutes. Order tests that actually move the needle.
Build and prune differentials: Start broad, prioritize by risk, drop items as data arrive.
Know the red flags: Pattern spotting for emergencies saves lives—don’t miss the catastrophic needle in the haystack.
Point-of-care testing: Apply bedside tests judiciously and interpret them in clinical context.
Reflect and calibrate: Review misses and near-misses, seek feedback, and adjust heuristics.
Deliberate reasoning beats guesswork, every day of the week.
How to Display Clinical Diagnosis Skills on Your Resume
5. Minor Surgical Procedures
Minor procedures are low-risk interventions under local anesthesia—lesion removals, biopsies, laceration repair, incision and drainage—often done same day in clinic.
Why It's Important
Faster relief, fewer referrals, and care that stays close to home. Patients appreciate swift, competent treatment.
How to Improve Minor Surgical Procedures Skills
Perfect the basics: Aseptic technique, safe local anesthesia use, and precise tissue handling.
Stock smart: Maintain instrument sets, suture ranges, derm tools, and emergency supplies—ready and sterile.
Consent and prep: Clear risks/benefits, site marking, allergy checks, and timeout protocols.
Specimen handling: Label correctly, choose the right medium, and send complete clinical details.
Aftercare: Written instructions, infection warning signs, and follow-up for removals and pathology results.
Small procedures, big trust.
How to Display Minor Surgical Procedures Skills on Your Resume
6. Health Education
Health education turns advice into action—tailored information that helps patients understand conditions and build habits that stick.
Why It's Important
Informed patients adhere better, spot warning signs sooner, and feel ownership over their care. Outcomes improve; anxiety drops.
How to Improve Health Education Skills
Use plain language: Short sentences. No jargon. Visuals help.
Teach-back: Ask patients to explain the plan in their words. Fix gaps on the spot.
Make it personal: Align goals with culture, literacy, and daily realities. One-size-fits-none.
Set SMART goals: Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound—tiny steps beat vague intentions.
Reinforce: Handouts, portals, reminders, and follow-up messages to keep momentum.
Education isn’t a lecture; it’s a two-way street.
How to Display Health Education Skills on Your Resume
7. Medical Coding (ICD-10)
ICD-10 (often ICD-10-CM in outpatient care) standardizes diagnoses for documentation, analytics, and reimbursement. Coupled with CPT/HCPCS, it completes the billing story.
Why It's Important
Accurate codes mean accurate payment, cleaner data, and fewer denials. Risk adjustment depends on specificity, which affects resources for complex patients.
How to Improve Medical Coding (ICD-10) Skills
Document to the code: Laterality, acuity, stage, cause—include the details codes require.
Use the right pairings: ICD-10 for diagnoses, CPT/HCPCS for services and supplies.
Stay current: Annual updates, payer policies, and local coverage rules change more than you think.
Audit and learn: Review charts, track denials, and close documentation gaps.
Know HCCs: Capture chronic conditions with specificity to reflect true patient risk.
Good coding starts with good notes. Everything else flows from that.
How to Display Medical Coding (ICD-10) Skills on Your Resume
8. CPR Certified
CPR certification confirms you can deliver high‑quality resuscitation. For clinicians, that usually means current Basic Life Support, with many also holding ACLS or PALS.
Why It's Important
Cardiac arrest doesn’t check the schedule. Immediate, competent action changes survival and neurologic outcomes.
How to Improve CPR Certified Skills
Refresh regularly: Skills decay fast. Practice compressions, ventilations, and team roles between renewals.
Use feedback devices: Real-time depth and rate guidance sharpens technique.
Scenario drills: Simulate arrests in your clinic—role assignments, crash cart checks, defibrillator readiness.
Stay guideline-aware: Incorporate updates on compression ratios, airway priorities, and post-ROSC care.
Debrief: After real events or drills, review what helped and what slowed you down.
When seconds count, muscle memory wins.
How to Display CPR Certified Skills on Your Resume
9. Vaccination Administration
Vaccination administration covers screening, consent, storage, preparation, delivery, documentation, and observation for vaccine safety and effectiveness.
Why It's Important
Immunization protects individuals and communities. It reduces severe illness, hospitalizations, and the ripple effects that follow outbreaks.
How to Improve Vaccination Administration Skills
Guard the cold chain: Calibrated thermometers, temperature logs, and action plans for excursions.
Screen and consent: Contraindications, prior reactions, pregnancy status, and patient questions—handled before the needle.
Technique matters: Correct site, needle size, and angle by age and body habitus. Comfort strategies reduce hesitancy.
Be anaphylaxis-ready: Epinephrine dosing, observation periods, and clear emergency protocols.
Document and report: Record lot numbers, sites, VIS dates (or equivalent), and submit to immunization registries when applicable.
Smooth workflows raise coverage rates and confidence.
How to Display Vaccination Administration Skills on Your Resume
10. Chronic Disease Management
Chronic Disease Management is sustained, coordinated care for long-term conditions—hypertension, diabetes, COPD, heart failure, depression, and more.
Why It's Important
Fewer flares, fewer admissions, better quality of life. Proactive care beats crisis care every time.
How to Improve Chronic Disease Management Skills
Risk stratify: Segment panels by risk and need. Higher touch for higher risk.
Care plans that breathe: Medication optimization, lifestyle targets, monitoring cadence, and clear thresholds for escalation.
Team-based care: Nurses, pharmacists, behavioral health, and community partners—shared protocols, shared wins.
Remote monitoring: Home BP, glucose uploads, pulse oximetry—data that prompts timely tweaks.
Motivational interviewing: Align change with values, not lectures. Barriers surfaced, not ignored.
Consistency turns small gains into lasting control.
How to Display Chronic Disease Management Skills on Your Resume
11. Preventive Care
Preventive care is the work of staying ahead—screenings, immunizations, counseling, and timely risk reduction.
Why It's Important
Early detection changes trajectories. Lifestyle shifts delay disease. Costs drop when crises are avoided.
How to Improve Preventive Care Skills
Use age- and risk-based schedules: Track screenings and vaccines with reminders and pre-visit planning.
Brief interventions that stick: Tobacco, alcohol, nutrition, sleep, and activity—short, targeted nudges add up.
Close gaps automatically: Registries, outreach lists, and standing orders to keep patients from falling through the cracks.
Address social drivers: Food, housing, transport, and stress. Connect patients to resources.
Document shared decisions: Make preferences clear when evidence is nuanced.
Prevention is quiet, steady work—and wildly effective.
How to Display Preventive Care Skills on Your Resume
12. E-Prescribing
E-prescribing sends prescriptions from clinic to pharmacy electronically, with safety checks baked in—and, for controlled substances, secure electronic prescribing where required.
Why It's Important
Fewer errors, faster fills, clearer communication. Interaction checks and allergy alerts avert harm.
How to Improve E-Prescribing Skills
Reconcile relentlessly: Verify meds at every visit. Update allergies and problem lists.
Lean on decision support: Interactions, dose ranges, renal adjustments, and duplicate therapy alerts—tuned to reduce noise.
Default to safer choices: Generics when appropriate, 90-day supplies for stable meds, lowest effective doses.
Use EPCS and PDMP: Secure workflows for controlled substances and check monitoring databases as required.
Close the loop: CancelRx when stopping meds, document indications, and message pharmacies for clarifications.
Clear, precise orders make everything downstream easier.
How to Display E-Prescribing Skills on Your Resume
