Top 12 Physician Assistant Skills to Put on Your Resume
In healthcare, details win interviews. For Physician Assistants, a sharp resume lives and breathes skills employers recognize. Call them out clearly, match them to the work you want, and your application cuts through the noise.
Physician Assistant Skills
- Patient Assessment
- EMR Proficiency (e.g., Epic, Cerner)
- Surgical Assistance
- Diagnostic Interpretation
- Pharmacology Knowledge
- ACLS/BLS Certification
- Wound Care
- Telehealth Platforms (e.g., Zoom, Doxy.me)
- Clinical Research
- Health Education
- Multidisciplinary Collaboration
- Medical Coding (e.g., ICD-10, CPT)
1. Patient Assessment
Patient assessment is the methodical gathering and interpretation of a patient’s history, exam findings, and diagnostics to inform decisions and shape a care plan.
Why It's Important
It anchors diagnosis, guides treatment, reduces risk, and personalizes care. Miss the assessment, and everything after wobbles.
How to Improve Patient Assessment Skills
Sharpen the fundamentals, then layer nuance:
Communication that works: Listen without rushing. Ask open-ended questions, then tighten with targeted follow-ups. Summarize back to confirm accuracy.
Current clinical knowledge: Refresh guidelines and red flags regularly. Build quick-reference notes for your specialty.
Evidence first: Use structured differential diagnosis thinking; document pretest probability and how data shifts it.
Ruthless consistency: Adopt a standardized approach (HPI → PMH/meds/allergies → focused exam → tests) and stick to it, even on hectic days.
Feedback loops: Debrief with mentors and colleagues; review cases you’d manage differently and write down the lessons.
Tech-savvy workflow: Build templates and smart phrases in the EHR that prompt completeness without bloating notes.
Cultural competence: Account for language, beliefs, and access. Tailor education and verify understanding.
Small, steady refinements compound into safer, faster, more accurate assessments.
How to Display Patient Assessment Skills on Your Resume
2. EMR Proficiency (e.g., Epic, Cerner)
EMR proficiency is the ability to document, order, reconcile, and review within electronic records efficiently and accurately, while supporting clinical decision-making and team communication.
Why It's Important
Clean documentation, fewer errors, faster throughput. Better care continuity. Easier billing and quality reporting. It’s the backbone of modern practice.
How to Improve EMR Proficiency (e.g., Epic, Cerner) Skills
Take the vendor and in-house trainings: Master basics, then the advanced tools used on your service line.
Practice in a safe sandbox: Reps build speed. Map your most common workflows and rehearse them.
Borrow wisdom: Ask power users for their shortcuts, smart phrases, and order sets. Steal what works.
Trim note bloat: Make targeted templates that meet compliance without drowning the signal.
Keep up with updates: Skim release notes; adopt features that replace manual steps.
How to Display EMR Proficiency (e.g., Epic, Cerner) Skills on Your Resume
3. Surgical Assistance
Surgical assistance spans pre-op prep, exposure, retraction, hemostasis, suturing, counts, and post-op care. It’s anticipation, precision, and calm under bright lights.
Why It's Important
Smooth assists speed cases and protect patients. A skilled PA expands a team’s capacity and strengthens outcomes.
How to Improve Surgical Assistance Skills
Targeted education: Pursue surgical CME; consider tracks for your specialty. The American Academy of Physician Associates offers resources tailored to PAs.
Hands-on simulation: Knot-tying boards, tissue models, and wet labs build dexterity you can trust in the OR.
Team communication: Use structured tools (e.g., SBAR) and pre-briefs to align on roles, steps, and pitfalls.
Specialty community: Engage with groups such as APACVS for cardiothoracic and vascular surgery pearls and workshops.
Tech fluency: Learn the instruments and platforms you’ll touch—endoscopic towers, robotics consoles, energy devices.
How to Display Surgical Assistance Skills on Your Resume
4. Diagnostic Interpretation
Diagnostic interpretation means turning labs, imaging, and special tests into actionable clinical decisions, always in the context of the patient.
Why It's Important
It closes the loop between data and care. Accurate reads prevent missteps, delays, and cascades of unnecessary testing.
How to Improve Diagnostic Interpretation Skills
See volume, then patterns: Seek varied cases; log findings and outcomes to reinforce pattern recognition.
Side-by-side learning: Review imaging with radiology, ECGs with cardiology, and tricky labs with your attending.
Decision-support tools: Use validated calculators and clinical reference apps; document your reasoning.
Case conferences: Present misses and wins; extract heuristics you can reuse.
Reflect and recalibrate: After tough cases, write short debriefs. What misled you? What would you do next time?
How to Display Diagnostic Interpretation Skills on Your Resume
5. Pharmacology Knowledge
Pharmacology knowledge includes mechanisms, indications, dosing, adverse effects, kinetics, monitoring, and meaningful interactions—translated into safe prescribing.
Why It's Important
Right drug, right patient, right time. Fewer reactions, better adherence, stronger outcomes.
How to Improve Pharmacology Knowledge Skills
Structured refreshers: Take CME focused on therapeutics in your patient population.
Daily micro-learning: Review one class or high-risk medication per day—dosing ranges, renal/hepatic adjustments, black box warnings.
Point-of-care tools: Keep references like Lexicomp or Epocrates handy; check interactions before you sign.
Medication reconciliation mastery: Build a checklist to catch duplications, OTC/herbal conflicts, and look-alike/sound-alike traps.
Case-based drills: Run through scenarios that stress-test your choices (polypharmacy in geriatrics, pregnancy, pediatrics, CKD).
How to Display Pharmacology Knowledge Skills on Your Resume
6. ACLS/BLS Certification
BLS covers core life support and CPR. ACLS builds beyond it—airway, rhythms, algorithms, meds, and team leadership in cardiac emergencies.
Why It's Important
In a code, seconds matter. Certification ensures shared language, muscle memory, and guideline-driven care.
How to Improve ACLS/BLS Certification Skills
Refresh on a cadence: Don’t wait for renewal. Run mock codes quarterly; rotate roles.
Algorithm fluency: Practice from memory, then verify. Focus on reversible causes and post-ROSC care.
High-quality CPR: Compression depth, rate, recoil, minimal pauses—drill it until it’s automatic.
Debrief every event: What went well? Where did delays creep in? Capture specific next steps.
Track updates: Monitor guideline updates and focused advisories; incorporate changes into your checklists.
How to Display ACLS/BLS Certification Skills on Your Resume
7. Wound Care
Wound care means accurate assessment, smart dressing selection, infection control, debridement when indicated, offloading, and education that sticks.
Why It's Important
Good care prevents infection, speeds closure, lowers pain, and curbs readmissions. Patients feel the difference quickly.
How to Improve Wound Care Skills
Assessment discipline: Document size, depth, tissue type, exudate, edges, odor, and periwound skin. Trend over time.
Dressings with intent: Match product to wound characteristics—moisture balance is the game.
Infection awareness: Distinguish colonization from infection; escalate appropriately.
Nutrition and perfusion: Screen for malnutrition and vascular disease; refer and address contributors.
Pressure injuries: Use current staging from the National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel (NPIAP); implement offloading and turning schedules.
Teach and verify: Show dressing changes, then observe return demonstration; provide simple written steps.
Team up: Collaborate with wound nurses, dietitians, PT/OT, podiatry, and ID when needed.
How to Display Wound Care Skills on Your Resume
8. Telehealth Platforms (e.g., Zoom, Doxy.me)
Telehealth competence is the ability to deliver safe, effective virtual visits—clinical quality intact, privacy protected, workflows tight.
Why It's Important
It expands access, preserves continuity, and reaches patients who might otherwise skip care. Convenience without compromise.
How to Improve Telehealth Platforms (e.g., Zoom, Doxy.me) Skills
Set the stage: Quiet space, neutral background, good lighting, wired internet if possible, backup audio plan.
Privacy first: Use approved, compliant versions; confirm patient identity and location; obtain consent; document it.
Virtual exam craft: Coach patients through self-exam maneuvers; use peripherals when available (BP cuffs, pulse ox, otoscope cams).
Templates that fit tele-visits: Build note structures for virtual workflows—triage, limitations, safety-netting, follow-up triggers.
Triage rules: Define what’s appropriate for telehealth vs. requires in-person or ED. Stick to it.
Dry runs: Test devices, updates, and workflows; maintain a troubleshooting checklist.
How to Display Telehealth Platforms (e.g., Zoom, Doxy.me) Skills on Your Resume
9. Clinical Research
Clinical research tests ideas in the real world—studies, trials, registries—to prove safety and efficacy and to improve care at the bedside.
Why It's Important
Evidence informs practice. Without it, we’re guessing. With it, we’re advancing.
How to Improve Clinical Research Skills
Method literacy: Strengthen knowledge of study design, bias, endpoints, and statistics relevant to your specialty.
Good Clinical Practice (GCP): Train and keep current; protect participants, preserve data integrity.
Patient-centered design: Engage patients early; simplify protocols; improve follow-up and retention.
Documentation discipline: Source data verification, clear CRFs, audit readiness—every time.
Collaborate widely: Work with investigators, pharmacists, coordinators, and data teams; clarify roles and timelines.
How to Display Clinical Research Skills on Your Resume
10. Health Education
Health education equips patients with understandable, actionable information so they can prevent disease, manage conditions, and navigate care.
Why It's Important
Education boosts adherence, drops avoidable complications, and helps patients own their outcomes.
How to Improve Health Education Skills
Meet literacy levels: Use plain language, short sentences, and visuals. Avoid jargon unless you explain it.
Teach-back: Ask patients to describe the plan in their own words; close gaps immediately.
Culturally aware messaging: Adapt content to beliefs, language, and access realities; involve family or caregivers when appropriate.
Right-time delivery: Layer information—critical now, nice-to-know later—so it sticks.
Reliable materials: Maintain a vetted library of handouts and digital summaries; keep them updated.
How to Display Health Education Skills on Your Resume
11. Multidisciplinary Collaboration
Collaboration means coordinated care with physicians, nurses, pharmacists, therapists, social work, and more—one plan, many experts.
Why It's Important
Better decisions, fewer gaps, safer transitions. Patients feel supported, not shuffled.
How to Improve Multidisciplinary Collaboration Skills
Structured communication: Use concise formats like SBAR; confirm closed-loop communication.
Shared goals: State the plan, the priorities, and the contingency paths so everyone rows the same direction.
Respect roles: Know what each discipline brings; ask for input early rather than late.
Huddles and debriefs: Short, focused touchpoints prevent long, messy problems.
Document clarity: Notes and orders that are unambiguous reduce paging and error.
How to Display Multidisciplinary Collaboration Skills on Your Resume
12. Medical Coding (e.g., ICD-10, CPT)
Medical coding translates diagnoses and procedures into standardized codes (ICD-10 and CPT) for documentation, quality reporting, and reimbursement.
Why It's Important
Accurate coding supports continuity of care, compliant billing, and clean claims. Sloppy coding costs money and time—and can skew quality metrics.
How to Improve Medical Coding (e.g., ICD-10, CPT) Skills
Learn the rules: Stay current with guideline updates, payer policies, and NCCI edits.
Leverage software: Use coding tools and EHR prompts, but verify logic with clinical judgment.
Practice and audit: Regular self-audits and peer reviews highlight patterns and fix errors fast.
Know documentation needs: Document specificity (laterality, acuity, stages, complications) so codes can be accurate.
Network with coders: Partner with certified coders for tough cases; convert their tips into templates.
How to Display Medical Coding (e.g., ICD-10, CPT) Skills on Your Resume
