Psychiatrist Resume and CV Examples

In the United States, physicians apply with a curriculum vitae. It runs two to six pages, lists everything in reverse order, and includes training, licensure, appointments, teaching, publications and presentations. Nobody in medicine expects it to fit on one page.

• Use a full CV for hospital systems, academic departments, community mental health centers, group practices, VA and correctional positions, and any credentialing packet. Recruiters and credentialing staff need every date, including month and year, because gaps have to be explained.
• Use a two-page resume for telepsychiatry companies, digital health and pharmaceutical or medical affairs roles, insurance and utilization review, and administrative jobs such as medical director at a payer. Those readers are often not physicians and are skimming for fit.
• Keep one master CV and cut from it. Never keep two versions with different dates, because credentialing will find the difference and it delays your start date.
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status and no hobbies in the US, even on a CV. Those belong on European CVs, not American ones.

A condensed two-page CV for a general adult psychiatrist in community mental health who also does telepsychiatry and supervises nurse practitioners. The person, the clinics and the training program are invented.

• Credentials, in one block: MD or DO, ACGME-accredited residency with dates, ABPN board certification or board-eligible status with the year, active state licenses, DEA, NPI. If you trained abroad, add your ECFMG certification.
• Practice fit. Population (adults, children and adolescents, geriatric, forensic, correctional, perinatal), setting (outpatient clinic, inpatient unit, emergency, consultation-liaison, telehealth), and payer or system type. Psychiatry hiring is highly setting-specific.
• Volume and scope. Patients a day, encounters a year, panel size, call obligations, whether you supervise nurse practitioners, and whether you take complex cases such as clozapine or ECT patients.
• Anything that shortens time to start: an existing license in the state, participation in the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, a clean malpractice history, and your availability date.
• Quality and system contribution: readmission, follow-up after hospitalization, wait time to first appointment, no-show rate, protocol or committee work. This is what separates two otherwise identical CVs.

“Board status, licenses and start date decide whether I open the CV at all. After that, tell me the population and the volume you are used to. A psychiatrist who has managed clozapine and long-acting injectables for people with serious mental illness is a different hire from someone doing 20-minute med checks for mild anxiety, and both CVs can look identical if the writing is vague.”

This is the part of a psychiatrist CV that gets edited wrong most often. Write it plainly, in one block, and keep it accurate to the letter.

• Board certification: "Board Certified in Psychiatry, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, [year]", plus any ABPN subspecialty certification and its year. If you have finished residency but not yet certified, write "board eligible" and the year you sit the exam. Do not write "board certified" until you are.
• Subspecialty certifications through ABPN include child and adolescent psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, geriatric psychiatry and consultation-liaison psychiatry. Name the fellowship program and dates alongside them.
• State licenses: state, status, and whether there are restrictions. List every active license, and say if you have applications pending or participate in the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact. Telepsychiatry employers hire on this line.
• DEA registration: current, and in which states. Since 2023, DEA registrants have had a one-time eight-hour training requirement on treating patients with substance use disorders; noting that it is complete is useful. The separate X-waiver for prescribing buprenorphine no longer exists, so do not list one.
• NPI number, BLS and any ACLS, plus malpractice coverage type if you are asked for it. Do not put malpractice claims history on the CV; that goes on the credentialing application.
• International medical graduates: add ECFMG certification with the year, visa status if relevant to the employer, and any observership or research experience in the US with real dates.

A short professional summary is optional on an academic CV and expected on a two-page resume. Four lines: board status, years, population and setting, volume, one measurable contribution.

• Child and adolescent: age range, school and pediatric collaboration, family work, ADHD and autism experience, custody or educational report writing, and wait time to first appointment.
• Addiction psychiatry: buprenorphine and naltrexone volume, withdrawal management, work in opioid treatment programs, harm reduction, and coordination with drug courts or probation if relevant.
• Forensic psychiatry: evaluation types and volumes (competency, criminal responsibility, civil), report turnaround, court testimony experience, and correctional facility work. Keep case names off the page.
• Geriatric psychiatry: dementia and behavioral symptom management, long-term care facility rounds, delirium, deprescribing work, and coordination with primary care.
• Consultation-liaison: consults a year, services covered, capacity assessments, transplant or oncology psychiatry, and any protocol you wrote for the hospital.
• Emergency, crisis and correctional: patients an hour or a shift, involuntary hold procedure under state law, seclusion and restraint reduction, and safety planning volume.
• Telepsychiatry and digital health: states licensed, visits a day, completed-visit rate, remote controlled-substance practice, and how crisis escalation works without an in-person site.

Residents and fellows are hired on training quality, breadth of rotations and availability date. Recruiters start contacting PGY-3s, so a usable CV should exist by then.

1. 1Put your graduation date and board examination plan in the header. Availability is the first thing a recruiter needs.
2. 2Start your state license application early and say on the CV that it is submitted, with the month. It changes when you can start and therefore whether you are competitive.
3. 3List rotations with volume and setting: inpatient months, consultation-liaison, emergency, addiction, child, geriatric, and the length of your continuity clinic with an approximate panel size.
4. 4Add chief resident duties, committee work, quality improvement projects, teaching and any protocol you helped write. These are the parts of a resident CV that read like an attending.
5. 5Keep publications, posters and presentations in their own sections with full citations, in reverse order. Do not scatter them through the experience section.
6. 6Say what you want: population, setting, geography, and whether you will take call or cover telehealth. Recruiters are matching you to a specific seat.

• Order for a psychiatry CV: name and contact with NPI, licensure and certification, education and training, appointments and employment, teaching, committee and administrative work, quality projects, publications and presentations, professional memberships, references on request.
• Length: two to six pages is normal. Academic psychiatrists with long publication lists run longer, and nobody minds. Cut to two pages only for non-clinical employers.
• Plain layout, consistent month and year formatting, no photo, no tables that break in an applicant tracking system. Hospital systems and telehealth companies both use them.
• Mirror the posting: outpatient psychiatrist, staff psychiatrist, attending psychiatrist, medical director, telepsychiatrist, child and adolescent psychiatrist. These are distinct searches.
• Words that recur in US psychiatry postings: board certified, ABPN, medication management, psychopharmacology, risk assessment, multidisciplinary, telepsychiatry, Epic, supervision, call coverage, serious mental illness, co-occurring.
• Send PDF named lastname-firstname-CV-psychiatry.pdf, and keep a plain-text version for portals that will not parse a PDF cleanly.

One more practical point. Keep a one-page summary of your licensure, DEA, NPI, training dates and malpractice carrier in a separate file. You will be asked for exactly that during credentialing, several times, by different people.