General Practitioner Resume Examples & Writing Guide

In the US a general practitioner is usually called a family physician or primary care physician. This sample is for a board-certified family physician nine years out of residency, now at a health-system primary care clinic after four years at a community health center. It is written as a two-page resume-style CV, which is what physician recruiters and medical groups ask for. The name, employers and schools are made up.

Most searches for this page say "CV", and most physicians keep a long academic CV that lists every publication, poster and committee. That document is for academic appointments and for credentialing. For a job application to a medical group, health system, FQHC or locum agency, recruiters want something shorter: two pages, results first, credentials easy to find. Call it a CV if you like; the structure below is what works.

• Page one: name with degree, target title and board status, a 3–4 line summary, licensure and certifications, then your current and most recent positions with bullets.
• Page two: earlier positions, residency, medical school and undergraduate degree, teaching, publications (a short list or "available on request"), languages and professional memberships (AAFP, state academy).
• Leave off: USMLE or COMLEX scores (once you are in practice they do not matter), NPI number, DEA number, license numbers, date of birth, photo, and a references list. Credentialing will ask for those separately.
• Include month and year for every position and training with no gaps. Credentialing teams reconcile your work history against primary sources; an unexplained six-month gap slows your start date.

In-house physician recruiters and search firms read dozens of family medicine CVs a week. Their first pass takes under a minute and looks for these items, roughly in order.

• Board certification: ABFM (MD) or AOBFP (DO) certified, board eligible with an exam date, or neither. Most groups will not credential an uncertified physician more than a few years out of residency.
• License: which states, active and unrestricted, and whether you can be licensed in their state quickly (Interstate Medical Licensure Compact eligibility helps).
• Scope: outpatient only, or inpatient, obstetrics, procedures, nursing home rounds, ER coverage. Rural and FQHC jobs pay for scope; suburban groups want productive outpatient volume.
• Productivity and quality: panel size, visits per day, wRVUs, quality measure results, patient experience scores. Groups pay on these, so they want to see them.
• Practice setting and stability: FQHC, health system, private group, academic, locum. Two or more jobs of under two years each will get a question, so explain moves in one clause.
• Availability and logistics: start date, visa status if any (J-1 waiver or H-1B needs), and whether you are open to relocation.

“Board status, license, DEA, then scope. If those four are on page one and clear, the CV moves forward. What loses candidates is making me hunt for whether they do OB or inpatient, or leaving out the panel size so I cannot tell if they are a 12-a-day or a 24-a-day physician.”

Use a summary, not an objective, once you are out of residency. Three or four lines: board status, years and setting, scope, one or two results with numbers, license states and languages. Examples for common situations:

Physician CVs often list positions with no bullets at all, or with a single line like "provided comprehensive primary care". Recruiters and medical directors want to know your volume, your scope and what improved. Four or five bullets per position is enough.

Keep the skills list short (10 to 12 items) and clinical. Recruiters filter on scope, procedures, EMR and language, so those are the words to include. General phrases like "excellent communication" and "patient-centered" are assumed and can be left off.

• Scope: full-spectrum family medicine, outpatient primary care, inpatient medicine, obstetrics (prenatal only or with deliveries), pediatrics, geriatrics and nursing home care, urgent care, sports medicine, palliative care.
• Chronic disease and preventive care: diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, COPD and asthma, heart failure, depression and anxiety, chronic pain, well-child care and immunizations, cancer screening.
• Procedures: joint injections, skin biopsies and excisions, cryotherapy, IUD and Nexplanon, colposcopy, laceration repair, incision and drainage, point-of-care ultrasound, vasectomy (if trained).
• Population health: HEDIS and UDS measures, MIPS reporting, value-based contracts and risk adjustment, panel management, care gap closure, transitions of care.
• EMR and tools: Epic, Oracle Health (Cerner), athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, NextGen, Dragon dictation, telehealth platforms. Name the exact systems you have used; groups budget training time by EMR.
• Languages: state the language and level (conversational, medical proficiency, fluent). Spanish is a real hiring advantage in most US markets.

Put licensure and certifications in their own section on page one, right under the summary or right after your current position. Give each item its issuer, status and year. Exact names matter: a recruiter who sees "board certified in general practice" will assume you are not certified at all, because no such US board exists for MDs and DOs in this specialty.

• Do not print your license numbers, DEA number or NPI on the resume; credentialing collects those separately. There is no X-waiver any more, so buprenorphine work is clinical scope, not a credential.
• Certificates of Added Qualifications (CAQs) through ABFM, for example in sports medicine, geriatric medicine, hospice and palliative medicine or adolescent medicine, go directly under your board certification.
• Memberships (AAFP, your state academy, ACOFP) go at the end of the resume, one line.

Residents usually start applying 12 to 18 months before graduation, so your resume has to sell training experience as if it were practice experience. Recruiters know the difference, but they still want volume, scope and a start date.

1. 1Header: name, MD or DO, "Family Medicine Resident, PGY-3" and expected graduation month and year. Add "Board eligible, ABFM exam scheduled [month year]" once you have a date.
2. 2Summary: your program type (opposed or unopposed, community or academic), continuity panel size, deliveries, procedure count, any inpatient or ER experience, target location and license status.
3. 3Residency as your main experience entry: 4–6 bullets with numbers. Continuity clinic panel size and visits per half-day, deliveries, procedures, inpatient census, chief resident or committee roles, quality projects with results, any moonlighting.
4. 4Medical school: degree, school, year; honors and any research in one line each. Undergraduate degree in one line.
5. 5Licensure: training license and any full license applications in progress with the state. Recruiters weigh this heavily because licensing can take 3–6 months.
6. 6Keep it to two pages. Leave out USMLE scores, high school and pre-med jobs.

• Two pages for most family physicians; three at most if you have significant teaching or publications. Move long publication lists to a separate document.
• Reverse chronological with month and year on everything, no gaps. Explain any gap of more than three months in one clause (fellowship, parental leave, visa processing, locum work).
• Plain, single-column layout such as the cvplex medical-clean template. Health systems run CVs through applicant tracking systems and credentialing software; two-column designs and text boxes break both.
• Name your file Lastname-Firstname-MD-CV.pdf. Send PDF unless the recruiter asks for Word.
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status, no Social Security number, no license or DEA numbers, no references list (say "available on request" only if the posting asks).
• Keep the same facts across your resume, your state license application and your CAQH profile. Credentialing compares them.

Words to mirror from the posting when true: family medicine, primary care, board certified, ABFM, outpatient, full-spectrum, inpatient, obstetrics, procedures, panel, wRVU, quality, HEDIS, value-based care, MIPS, patient experience, Epic (or the named EMR), precepting, FQHC, rural, telehealth, Spanish.