Top 12 Research Nurse Skills to Put on Your Resume
In the highly specialized field of research nursing, showcasing a tailored set of skills on your resume can significantly elevate your marketability to potential employers. This article outlines the top 12 skills that research nurses should highlight to demonstrate their adeptness in clinical research, patient care, and data management, setting the foundation for a successful career in this dynamic healthcare sector.
Research Nurse Skills
- Phlebotomy
- EHR (Electronic Health Records)
- SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences)
- Clinical Monitoring
- Patient Recruitment
- GCP (Good Clinical Practice)
- IRB Submissions
- Data Analysis
- Protocol Development
- Informed Consent
- Patient Education
- CPR/BLS Certification
1. Phlebotomy
Phlebotomy is the process of making an incision in a vein with a needle to collect blood samples for medical testing, transfusions, or research purposes, including tasks often performed by a Research Nurse to obtain specimens for study analyses.
Why It's Important
Phlebotomy is crucial for a Research Nurse as it enables the collection of blood samples for analysis, helping in the diagnosis, monitoring, and research of medical conditions, and evaluating the effectiveness of treatments.
How to Improve Phlebotomy Skills
Improving phlebotomy skills, especially for a Research Nurse, calls for continuous education, practice, and meticulous attention to patient safety and comfort. Try these approaches:
Stay Updated: Complete ongoing education and skills checks. Certifications through organizations such as the American Society for Clinical Pathology can reinforce standards.
Practice Technique: Seek structured practice via workshops and simulation labs. Consistent repetition sharpens site selection, angle control, and order-of-draw accuracy.
Use of Technology: When appropriate, employ vein visualization devices to boost first-pass success, especially in difficult-access patients.
Follow Guidelines: Align with CLSI phlebotomy guidance (e.g., GP41) for safe collection, labeling, and transport procedures.
Patient Communication: Explain steps plainly, check for prior experiences, and use calming techniques. Better comfort often means better draws.
Peer Review and Feedback: Invite observation, log attempts, and review near-miss events. Small refinements compound quickly.
Infection Prevention: Rigorously follow hand hygiene, PPE, and sharps safety in line with OSHA and facility policies.
With steady practice and strict adherence to standards, phlebotomy becomes faster, gentler, and more reliable.
How to Display Phlebotomy Skills on Your Resume
2. EHR (Electronic Health Records)
EHR (Electronic Health Records) is a digital version of a patient's paper chart, used by healthcare providers to record, manage, and share patient health information securely, facilitating improved patient care and research data accuracy.
Why It's Important
EHRs are essential for research nurses because they provide timely, comprehensive patient data, enable precise monitoring, streamline research data capture, and improve care coordination and outcomes.
How to Improve EHR (Electronic Health Records) Skills
Better EHR use blends usability, interoperability, and disciplined data habits:
Streamline Data Entry: Standardize fields, templates, and picklists. Use LOINC for lab data and SNOMED CT for clinical terms to keep records consistent and searchable.
Interoperability First: Advocate for FHIR-based exchange and clean interfaces between EHR, CTMS, and ePRO tools to cut duplication and errors.
Decision Support: Configure alerts, order sets, and research-specific templates that nudge accuracy without overwhelming users.
Data Security: Follow HIPAA and organizational policies for access, encryption, and audit trails. Role-based permissions matter.
Focused Training: Short, scenario-based refreshers beat marathon sessions. Build quick guides for study workflows.
Patient Engagement: Encourage portal use for reminders, questionnaires, and visit prep. It improves adherence and data completeness.
Quality Checks: Run regular data validation and duplicate checks; correct at the source, not downstream.
Regulatory Awareness: Keep current on information blocking rules and data-sharing requirements under the 21st Century Cures Act.
Sharper EHR fluency reduces clicks, clarifies data, and speeds clean exports for analysis.
How to Display EHR (Electronic Health Records) Skills on Your Resume
3. SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences)
SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) is a software tool used for data management, statistical analysis, and graphical representation of data, widely utilized in healthcare research to analyze complex datasets and derive evidence-based conclusions.
Why It's Important
SPSS gives Research Nurses a practical platform to clean data, run analyses, and translate results into decisions that improve care and study quality.
How to Improve SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) Skills
Build proficiency through targeted practice and smart habits:
Solidify Fundamentals: Refresh core statistics and learn SPSS data structures, variable types, and assumptions for common tests.
Practice With Relevant Data: Use healthcare datasets that mirror your studies. Reproduce published analyses to test your approach.
Use Syntax: Record steps in syntax for reproducibility and speed. Version control your scripts.
Explore Advanced Features: Try regression diagnostics, generalized linear models, survival analyses, and macros for automation.
Quality Control: Build data dictionaries, label variables clearly, and run systematic missingness and outlier checks.
Peer Feedback: Review outputs with a statistician or experienced colleague. Calibrate interpretations, not just p-values.
Consistent, documented workflows in SPSS make analyses faster to run and easier to defend.
How to Display SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) Skills on Your Resume
4. Clinical Monitoring
Clinical monitoring in the context of a Research Nurse involves overseeing and ensuring the integrity, safety, and compliance of a clinical trial. It includes verifying that the study is conducted according to the protocol, regulatory requirements, and good clinical practice, safeguarding the rights and well-being of participants, and ensuring the accuracy and reliability of data collected.
Why It's Important
Monitoring protects participants and data. It keeps trials aligned with protocol, regulation, and ethics, while spotting issues early so corrections are swift and well-documented.
How to Improve Clinical Monitoring Skills
Elevate monitoring with precision and foresight:
Continued Education: Maintain training through recognized clinical research programs and internal SOP refreshers.
Risk-Based Monitoring: Focus effort where risk is highest. Use targeted source data verification and centralized analytics to spot anomalies fast.
Adopt Technology: Leverage CTMS, EHR integrations, and ePRO to enable near real-time review and remote or hybrid monitoring.
Communication: Keep a tight loop with investigators, coordinators, and sponsors. Clear notes, quick escalation, no ambiguity.
Compliance and Ethics: Anchor decisions in GCP and institutional policy. Document rationale for deviations and corrective actions.
Done well, monitoring becomes less guesswork and more guided, data-informed oversight.
How to Display Clinical Monitoring Skills on Your Resume
5. Patient Recruitment
Patient recruitment, in the context of a research nurse, involves identifying and enrolling suitable participants for clinical trials or studies to ensure the research objectives can be met effectively and ethically.
Why It's Important
Recruitment drives timelines, diversity, and statistical power. Without the right participants, even the best protocol limps.
How to Improve Patient Recruitment Skills
Blend empathy, outreach, and logistics:
Know the Protocol Cold: Inclusion/exclusion, visit cadence, burden. When you know it deeply, you match the right people faster.
Human-Centered Messaging: Explain purpose, risks, and commitments plainly. Address transportation, time, and support needs upfront.
Smart Sourcing: Use EHR queries, registries, and community networks. Tap ResearchMatch and public trial registries for visibility.
Build Referral Pathways: Partner with clinics and care teams. Provide concise referral guides and quick eligibility checks.
Inclusive Strategies: Plan outreach for underrepresented groups, offer flexible hours, language access, and culturally attuned materials.
Simplify the Process: Streamline pre-screening, use eConsent where appropriate, cut redundant forms, and schedule swiftly.
Follow Through: Timely callbacks and clear next steps keep interest alive and reduce drop-off.
Recruitment is trust plus convenience. Nail both.
How to Display Patient Recruitment Skills on Your Resume
6. GCP (Good Clinical Practice)
GCP (Good Clinical Practice) is a set of internationally recognized ethical and scientific quality standards for designing, conducting, recording, and reporting trials that involve the participation of human subjects. For a Research Nurse, GCP ensures the rights, safety, and well-being of trial participants are protected and that the trial data are accurate, reliable, and verifiable.
Why It's Important
GCP underpins ethical conduct, credible data, and participant protection. It’s the backbone of trustworthy trials.
How to Improve GCP (Good Clinical Practice) Skills
Strengthen adherence and audit readiness:
Keep Current: Refresh training regularly and track updates to ICH E6(R3) and ICH E8(R1). Translate changes into updated SOPs.
Protocol Fidelity: Execute to plan. For deviations, document cause, impact, and corrective/preventive actions.
Informed Consent Mastery: Ensure comprehension, voluntariness, and proper documentation. Re-consent when protocol or risk changes warrant it.
ALCOA+ Documentation: Attributable, Legible, Contemporaneous, Original, Accurate, plus Complete, Consistent, Enduring, and Available.
Safety Vigilance: Detect, document, and report adverse events promptly with clear attribution and timelines.
Continuous Improvement: Use audits, monitoring findings, and CAPAs to harden processes over time.
Team Communication: Regular huddles and issue logs keep everyone aligned and inspection-ready.
Live GCP daily, not just at audit time.
How to Display GCP (Good Clinical Practice) Skills on Your Resume
7. IRB Submissions
IRB submissions refer to the process of submitting a research proposal to an Institutional Review Board (IRB) for ethical review and approval before starting a study involving human subjects. For a Research Nurse, this entails ensuring that the planned research respects participants' rights, safety, and welfare and complies with regulatory requirements.
Why It's Important
IRB review safeguards participants and ensures ethical, compliant study conduct from the start.
How to Improve IRB Submissions Skills
Make submissions crisp, complete, and consistent:
Know the Requirements: Follow your IRB’s checklists, forms, and eIRB workflows. Understand exempt, expedited, and full-board pathways.
Maintain Training: Keep human subjects research certifications current (e.g., CITI), including GCP if applicable.
Use Consults: Pre-submission meetings clarify sticking points and save cycles later.
Write a Clear Protocol: Objectives, methods, endpoints, statistics, safety, and data protection—tight and internally consistent.
Consent That Lands: Plain language, appropriate reading level, teach-back prompts, and translations when needed.
Risk Mitigation: Name foreseeable risks and lay out monitoring, reporting, and stopping rules.
Consistency Check: Align protocol, consent, recruitment materials, and instruments. No contradictions.
Single IRB Readiness: For multi-site studies, prepare reliance agreements and site addenda early.
Respond Fast: Address IRB queries completely and quickly, with tracked changes for clarity.
Clean submissions speed approvals. Sloppy ones stall.
How to Display IRB Submissions Skills on Your Resume
8. Data Analysis
Data analysis in the context of a Research Nurse involves systematically examining, cleaning, and interpreting collected data to draw meaningful conclusions, identify patterns or trends, and inform evidence-based healthcare decisions and practices.
Why It's Important
Analysis turns raw records into insight. Better choices, better care, better studies.
How to Improve Data Analysis Skills
Sharpen method and mindset:
Statistics Foundation: Refresh descriptive and inferential methods relevant to your endpoints.
Tools Proficiency: Gain fluency in SPSS, R, or Python for cleaning, analysis, and reproducible workflows.
Visualization: Use tools like Tableau or Power BI to make trends and outliers visible fast.
Reproducibility: Document code and steps, track versions, and keep raw data immutable.
Ethics and Quality: Uphold privacy, minimize bias, and predefine analysis plans where feasible.
Peer Review: Reality-check your analysis and conclusions with statisticians and domain experts.
Clean inputs, transparent methods, cautious interpretations—that’s the recipe.
How to Display Data Analysis Skills on Your Resume
9. Protocol Development
Protocol development, in the context of a research nurse, refers to the process of creating a detailed plan that outlines the study's objectives, methodology, participant care, and data management procedures to ensure the research is conducted safely, ethically, and effectively.
Why It's Important
A sound protocol guides operations, protects participants, and yields data you can trust.
How to Improve Protocol Development Skills
Design for rigor and feasibility:
Stay Current: Track methodological and regulatory updates. Build changes into templates and checklists.
Feasibility First: Validate eligibility rates, visit schedules, sample volumes, and procedure burden against real clinic flow.
Patient-Centered Design: Include patient input, consider decentralized elements, and reduce friction where possible.
Operational Clarity: Define roles, training, data flows, and monitoring plans. Ambiguity becomes deviation later.
Data Strategy: Pre-specify endpoints, case report forms, and quality checks. Map data to standards early.
Cross-Functional Review: Involve pharmacy, lab, IT, and finance before finalizing. Surprises cost time.
Good protocols read like a map: unambiguous, navigable, and complete.
How to Display Protocol Development Skills on Your Resume
10. Informed Consent
Informed consent is a process through which research participants are given comprehensive information about a study, including its purpose, duration, procedures, risks, benefits, and their rights, ensuring they voluntarily agree to participate with a clear understanding of their role and the research implications. For a research nurse, it involves clearly explaining this information to participants and ensuring they understand it before obtaining their written consent to participate.
Why It's Important
Consent honors autonomy and protects participants, while strengthening the ethical core of the research.
How to Improve Informed Consent Skills
Make understanding the goal, not signatures:
Plain Language: Target a 6th–8th grade reading level. Short sentences, common words, concrete examples.
Multimedia and eConsent: Use visuals and interactive elements where appropriate to explain procedures and timelines.
Consent as a Dialogue: Treat it as ongoing. Revisit when new information arises or when visits get complex.
Cultural and Language Access: Offer qualified interpreters and culturally attuned materials. Avoid idioms and assumptions.
Teach-Back: Ask participants to explain key points in their own words. Gaps signal where to re-explain.
Documentation Discipline: Date, time, version control, and who obtained consent—captured cleanly and stored securely.
Clarity builds trust, and trust keeps participants engaged.
How to Display Informed Consent Skills on Your Resume
11. Patient Education
Patient education, in the context of a Research Nurse, involves informing and instructing participants about the details of clinical trials, including the study's purpose, procedures, potential risks, and benefits, to ensure they have a clear understanding and can make informed decisions about their participation.
Why It's Important
Education empowers patients, reduces errors, boosts adherence, and improves outcomes. In research, it also supports valid data collection.
How to Improve Patient Education Skills
Communicate so it sticks:
Know Your Audience: Assess literacy, health literacy, and preferences before you teach.
Simplify: Translate jargon into everyday language. Use checklists, summaries, and white space.
Visual Aids: Diagrams, timelines, and brief videos can make complex steps feel manageable.
Personalize: Tailor materials to the patient’s condition, schedule, and concerns.
Reinforce: Provide take-home materials and digital reminders. Repeat key points at critical visits.
Teach-Back: Confirm understanding by having patients explain the plan back to you.
Invite Questions: Normalize uncertainty. Provide a clear contact method for follow-up.
Follow-Up: Re-check understanding and adherence after the visit; adjust instructions as needed.
Clear, kind, and concise beats long and lofty every time.
How to Display Patient Education Skills on Your Resume
12. CPR/BLS Certification
CPR/BLS Certification for a Research Nurse signifies that the nurse is trained in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and Basic Life Support (BLS), essential skills for providing immediate and effective responses to individuals experiencing cardiac or breathing emergencies. This certification ensures the nurse can perform lifesaving interventions until further medical treatment is available.
Why It's Important
CPR/BLS lets you respond decisively to cardiac and respiratory emergencies in clinics, labs, and during study visits—when seconds matter.
How to Improve CPR/BLS Certification Skills
Keep skills fresh and adaptable:
Stay Current: Review the latest AHA and ILCOR updates. Incorporate focused updates into practice promptly.
Refresher Training: Re-certify on time (typically every two years) and seek scenario-based sessions tailored to your setting.
Hands-On Simulation: Practice with manikins and feedback devices that track compression depth and rate.
Team Drills: Run mock codes with your unit. Define roles, equipment locations, and post-event debrief routines.
Reflect and Improve: After real or simulated events, review what went well and what stumbled. Adjust checklists and training accordingly.
Preparedness turns panic into protocol.
How to Display CPR/BLS Certification Skills on Your Resume
