General Practitioner CV Examples & Writing Guide

In the UK, general practitioner (GP) is the standard title; in the US the same doctor is usually called a family physician. This sample is for a GP nine years after completing GP training, now a partner in a suburban practice after four years as a salaried GP in an inner-city practice. It is written as a two-page CV, which is what practices, primary care networks and locum agencies ask for. The name, practices and university are made up.

Most doctors keep a long CV that lists every post, audit, publication, course and committee. That document is useful for appraisal, academic posts and specialty applications. For a salaried, partnership or locum application to a practice, a primary care network or an agency, partners want something shorter: two pages, results first, registration easy to find. The structure below is what works.

• Page one: name with qualifications, target role and MRCGP, a 3–4 line personal statement, registration and qualifications, then your current and most recent posts with bullets.
• Page two: earlier posts, GP specialty training, the Foundation Programme, medical school, teaching, audits and quality improvement projects, publications (a short list or "available on request"), languages and memberships (RCGP, local medical committee roles).
• Leave off: exam marks (once you are qualified they do not matter), National Insurance number, date of birth, photo, marital status, and a list of referees. Practices ask for referees separately, usually including your most recent clinical supervisor or a partner.
• Include month and year for every post and training period with no gaps. Practices, NHS England and your responsible officer check your history; an unexplained six-month gap slows your start date.

Partners, practice managers, PCN clinical directors and locum agencies read dozens of GP CVs when a post is open. Their first pass takes under a minute and looks for these items, roughly in order.

• Registration and MRCGP: full GMC registration with a licence to practise, entry on the GP Register, and MRCGP, or your CCT date if you are finishing training. Practices cannot employ you as a GP without GP Register entry.
• Performers List: included on the NHS England Medical Performers List without conditions (Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own lists). Moving between UK nations means a new application, so say where you are in the process.
• Scope: sessions a week and extended roles such as minor surgery, coil and implant fitting, joint injections, care home rounds, dermatology, menopause or substance misuse, and whether you are a GP trainer. Rural and dispensing practices value broad scope; busy urban practices want steady session capacity.
• Workload and quality: list size per GP, contacts per session, duty doctor and triage work, QOF lead areas, prescribing or referral work, access improvements, patient survey results.
• Setting and stability: partnership, salaried, locum, PCN roles, out-of-hours. Two or more posts of under two years each will get a question, so explain moves in one clause.
• Availability and logistics: start date, number of sessions wanted, notice period, whether you need Skilled Worker visa sponsorship, and whether you are open to relocation.

“Registration, Performers List, MRCGP, 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 minor surgery or coils, or leaving out sessions and list size so I cannot tell what workload they are used to.”

Use a personal statement, not a career objective, once you are qualified. Three or four lines: MRCGP and registration, years and setting, scope, one or two results with numbers, the sessions you want and languages. Examples for common situations:

GP CVs often list posts with no bullets at all, or with a single line like "provided comprehensive primary care". Partners and practice managers want to know your workload, your scope and what improved. Four or five bullets per post is enough.

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

• Scope: general practice for all ages, duty doctor and same-day work, home visits, care homes and frailty, end-of-life care, women's health and menopause, child health and baby checks, mental health, out-of-hours or urgent care.
• Long-term conditions and prevention: diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, COPD and asthma, heart failure, depression and anxiety, chronic pain, childhood immunisations, cancer screening and suspected cancer referrals.
• Procedures: joint and soft tissue injections, minor surgery, cryotherapy, coil and implant fitting (FSRH Letters of Competence), ring pessaries, vasectomy (if trained).
• Population health: QOF, enhanced services, prescribing work, recall and risk searches, care planning, PCN work and supervising ARRS clinicians.
• Clinical systems and tools: EMIS Web, SystmOne, Docman, Accurx, ICE, the e-Referral Service (e-RS), video consultation platforms. Name the exact systems you have used; practices plan induction time around them.
• Languages: state the language and level (conversational, medical proficiency, fluent). A language many of your patients speak is a real advantage in many practices.

Put registration and qualifications in their own section on page one, right under the personal statement or right after your current post. Give each item its issuer, status and year. Exact names matter: GMC registration with a licence to practise, entry on the GP Register (which follows your CCT, or a CEGPR through the portfolio pathway) and inclusion on the Performers List are three different things, and a reader who sees only "GMC registered" will ask about the other two.

• Your GMC number can go on the CV, since it is on the public register, or be offered on request. Leave off your National Insurance number, date of birth and indemnity policy number; practices collect those separately.
• Further qualifications such as DFSRH, a postgraduate certificate in medical education or accreditation as a GP with an extended role (for example in dermatology or musculoskeletal medicine) go directly under MRCGP.
• Memberships (RCGP fellowship, local medical committee roles) go at the end of the CV, one line.

Registrars usually start applying a few months before their CCT date, so your CV has to sell training experience as if it were practice experience. Partners know the difference, but they still want workload, scope and a start date.

1. 1Header: name, MBChB or MBBS, "GP Specialty Registrar, ST3" and expected CCT month and year. Add "MRCGP: AKT passed, SCA [month year]" once you have a date.
2. 2Personal statement: your training scheme and training practice (list size, training or teaching practice), hospital posts, procedure count, out-of-hours experience, the sessions you want and target area.
3. 3GP training as your main experience entry: 4–6 bullets with numbers. Patients per session, home visits, care home work, procedures, quality improvement projects with results, audits, out-of-hours sessions, registrar representative or committee roles.
4. 4Foundation Programme and medical school: degree, school, year; prizes, an intercalated degree and any research in one line each.
5. 5Registration: GMC registration with a licence to practise, Performers List inclusion as a registrar, and the date you expect to join the GP Register. Practices weigh this heavily because they cannot book you as a GP until it is in place.
6. 6Keep it to two pages. Leave out exam marks, school results and pre-medicine jobs.

• Two pages for most GPs; three at most if you have significant teaching, leadership 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 (parental leave, career break, travel, locum work, visa processing).
• Plain, single-column layout such as the cvplex medical-clean template. Larger practices, federations and NHS employers use recruitment systems that read text; two-column designs and text boxes break them.
• Name your file Lastname-Firstname-GP-CV.pdf. Send PDF unless the practice asks for Word.
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status, no National Insurance number, no referees list (practices ask for referees at offer stage).
• Keep the same facts across your CV, your GMC record, your Performers List entry and your appraisal portfolio. Practices and NHS England compare them.

Words to mirror from the advert when true: general practice, salaried GP, GP partner, locum, MRCGP, GMC, GP Register, Performers List, sessions, list size, duty doctor, triage, QOF, long-term conditions, minor surgery, coil fitting, care homes, GP trainer, EMIS Web or SystmOne, PCN, ARRS, Spanish.