Medical secretary CV example (2026)

Writing the CV for the medical secretary role

Start your CV with the ward or outpatient clinic where you worked and the type of specialists you planned for. Then put the patient record you used, such as HiX or Epic. That way a hospital sees straight away whether you already know its way of working.

A medical secretary keeps a department’s planning on track and is the point of contact for patients, specialists and other departments. Medical terminology, accurate work in the record and discretion with data are points you can make concrete. Put them in your profile text and in the first bullets of your current role.

What you do in this role

You plan outpatient appointments, examinations and admissions, and adjust the planning when a specialist is absent or an emergency patient has to be fitted in. You draft letters and reports, often using speech recognition or dictation, and check the medical terms. You also deal with patients at the counter and on the telephone, and arrange post and referrals.

Keep the CV to one or two pages.

How your CV matches the advert

Read the advert and note the type of organisation: an academic hospital, a general hospital, an independent clinic or a rehabilitation centre. The specialisms and systems differ by place. Name the specialisms you worked in, so the reader sees which professional language you already know.

In this role, planning is more than keeping a diary. Describe how you aligned outpatient appointments, examinations and results, so that a patient did not have to come in twice. That one sentence shows you think ahead and keep the patient in mind when planning.

Drafting letters requires knowledge of medical terms and a good eye for errors. State whether you worked with speech recognition or dictation, and how you checked that a term or dosage was correct. If you were unsure of a term, you asked the specialist; say in your CV that you do this.

Patients often call with questions that really belong to the doctor. Describe how you handled those: what you answered yourself, when you made a callback request for the specialist or the nurse specialist, and how you recorded it. That shows you know the limits of your role.

Privacy is part of every part of the work, from the counter to the post. State in your CV how you handled medical data, for example by checking a caller’s identity before giving information. A hospital wants to be sure that confidential information is in good hands with you.

At an outpatient clinic you work with many colleagues: specialists, nurses, the functional diagnostics department and the operating theatre planning. Describe who you coordinated with daily and how, for example in a fixed meeting or via the record. That makes visible that you can be the hub of a department, without needing to use that word.

Which layout suits the medical secretary CV

Choose one column, clear headings and a standard font. Tables and text boxes can cause errors when software reads a CV.

A calm single-column CV suits a medical secretariat. Put the patient record and medical terminology in a separate skills block, so they are visible at a glance. Pay extra attention to spelling: the reader expects a flawless text from a secretary.

Save your CV as a PDF with a recognisable file name, such as firstname-surname-cv.pdf.

What to put on the medical secretary CV

Every CV contains at least your contact details, your work experience with dates, your education and certificates, and your skills and languages.

Name the specialisms and departments you worked in and the type of planning: outpatient appointments, examinations, admissions or operations. Mention the patient record, the speech recognition software and other systems you used. Add your knowledge of medical terminology, with the course or training where you learned it. Also name the languages in which you speak to patients.

Put your name at the top, with your town, email address and phone number. Your citizen service number (BSN), date of birth or marital status do not need to be on your CV.

Profile text: example (good and weak)

Below are two profile texts for the medical secretary, both written for a fictional person. You can copy the structure.

Medical secretary with six years of experience at the cardiology and pulmonology outpatient clinics of a general hospital. I schedule consultations and tests, type up letters from specialists and am the point of contact for patients at the desk and on the phone. I work accurately in the electronic patient record and handle medical data with care. I am looking for a role in which I can keep improving the planning of a department.

Medical secretary with four years of experience at an orthopaedic outpatient clinic. I plan outpatient appointments and operations for five orthopaedic surgeons and coordinate the planning with the operating theatre secretariat. I draft letters using speech recognition and check the medical terms before they go out. I am looking for a department where I can apply my experience with complex planning.

The first example names the departments, the tasks and what the candidate is looking for. The second adds the specialism, the scale of the planning and the checking of letters. The weak version uses qualities anyone can claim. A specialism and a system named outright make it clear straight away where your experience lies.

Weak version: “I am a confident medical secretary who enjoys working with patients and is stress-resistant.”

A profile text is short: four or five sentences. Write in the first person and say what you do, what you are good at and what you are looking for.

Making your work experience stand out

The example bullet points below belong to a fictional example CV. The figures are illustrative: use only your own figures, and only if they are accurate.

Start each bullet with an action word and state the result, not only the task.

• Outpatient planning for six cardiologists, coordinated with the functional diagnostics department for echocardiograms and exercise tests.
• On average 40 letters per week drafted using speech recognition, with a fixed check of medical terms and medication.
• Waiting list for follow-up appointments maintained; patients with a postponed appointment rescheduled within two weeks.
• Patients’ telephone questions answered, or passed on as a callback request to the nurse specialist.
• Referrals from GPs checked for completeness and scheduled with the right urgency, in consultation with the specialist.
• Three new colleagues trained in HiX and in the department’s working agreements.

For each job, give the job title, employer, place and period, and put your current job at the top.

No work experience?

Have no experience in a medical secretariat yet? A placement in a hospital or with a GP counts, as does secretarial work in another sector. Name the tasks you did independently, such as managing diaries, drafting letters or answering the telephone. A course in medical terminology shows that you are already preparing for the job.

Action words for your CV

Action words make your work concrete. A few that work well on a CV:

• Organised
• Supervised
• Improved
• Monitored
• Planned
• Recorded
• Consulted
• Delivered
• Coordinated
• Ensured

Use each word only once per job, and only if it matches your work.

Education on your CV

Put your medical secretary training at the top, with the level, the school and the year of your diploma. If you have another secretarial qualification, such as management assistant, name it and add a course in medical terminology below. Placements in healthcare are named with the department where you did them.

List older education more briefly, so that recent work gets more space.

Skills on the medical secretary CV

Hard skills

• Electronic patient records (HiX)
• Medical terminology
• Consultation planning
• Typing up letters with speech recognition
• Patient contact

Soft skills

• Staying calm when the waiting room is full and the telephone keeps ringing
• Discreet handling of medical information
• Checking names, dates and terms accurately
• Friendly and clear towards anxious patients
• Thinking ahead when planning with many dependencies

Show these qualities with a situation, such as a day when a specialist was absent and you rescheduled all the patients. Describe what you did first and how you informed the patients. That shows more than the word stress-resistant.

Choose five to eight hard skills that you currently use.

Give an example from your work for Electronic patient records (HiX), Medical terminology, Consultation planning, Typing up letters with speech recognition and Patient contact.

Certificates, languages and hobbies

For a medical secretary, a course in medical terminology and training in the hospital’s patient record are the most relevant. Name the provider and the year. A course in speech recognition or minute-taking also fits. If you work with patients who speak another language, list your languages with your level on your CV.

Put a certificate on your CV if it fits the role.

• Medical terminology (Zorgacademie Oost, 2019)

Languages in this example: Dutch (moedertaal), English (goed), German (basis).

Example medical secretary CV

This is how the example looks in a real template. It is a starting point: take over the structure, not the text.

The fictional candidate is called Noor van Leeuwen and lives in Nijmegen. The example carries the headline: Medical secretary · outpatient clinic.

Common mistakes on the medical secretary CV

• Not naming the specialisms, so it is not visible which professional language you know.
• Not naming the patient record. A hospital wants to know whether you know HiX, Epic or another system.
• A CV with spelling errors. In a role where you draft letters, this stands out even more.
• Writing only “planning” without saying what you planned: outpatient appointments, examinations or operations.
• Describing a situation with a patient so that the person can be recognised. Always keep examples general.

Have someone else proofread your CV for spelling and for the names of departments and systems. A second reader sees more quickly what you overlook.

Key points

• Name the specialisms and the type of planning you did for each role.
• Put the patient record and your speech recognition software by name in your CV.
• Show that you know the limits of your role when patients ask medical questions.
• Check your CV carefully for spelling: it is the first piece of work the employer sees.

Read your CV aloud before you send it.