A few months ago I reviewed a CV from a Senior Health Officer with ten years of experience at GHS. She had managed a district immunisation programme, supervised twelve community health nurses, overseen a malaria prevention campaign that reached six sub-districts, and trained over eighty CHVs in child health protocols.
None of that was in her CV.
Her CV said she was "responsible for the coordination and supervision of public health activities in the district, ensuring compliance with national health policies and protocols." Ten years of concrete, measurable work, compressed into a sentence that told me nothing about her specifically.
A bad health officer who did the minimum required could have written that same sentence. That's the problem.
The difference between a duty and an achievement
A duty describes what your role required. An achievement describes what you did with it.
Every person who held your position had the same duties. Not every person had the same achievements. A duty-based CV makes you indistinguishable from everyone else who has ever had your job title. An achievement-based CV shows the recruiter specifically what you brought to it.
There is a quick test for any CV entry: could a poor performer have written this sentence?
If "responsible for coordinating community health activities" could have been written by someone who was consistently late, missed supervision visits, and had the worst data quality scores in the region — then it's a duty, and it's not doing any work for you.
Why health professionals write duty-based CVs
This isn't carelessness. There are two real reasons health professionals default to duty language.
The first is training culture. Medical and public health training focuses on protocols, responsibilities, and competencies — not personal achievements. You are trained to do your job correctly, not to track how well you did it relative to others. Writing about your own performance as evidence feels unfamiliar.
The second is modesty. Many health professionals I speak with feel uncomfortable writing "I achieved a 91% immunisation coverage rate" because it feels like bragging, or because they feel the coverage rate was a team effort, not theirs alone.
I understand both of these. But here is the reality: a CV is a marketing document. Recruiters at WHO, IRC, and UNICEF are reading twenty CVs for every opening. They are looking for evidence of performance. If you don't provide it, they move on to the person who does — even if that person is less qualified than you.
Stating your achievements is not bragging. It's how applications work.
Before and after: four real examples
Community Health Nurse
Before:
"Responsible for providing maternal and child health services to community members, conducting home visits, and reporting health data to district offices."
After:
"Delivered ANC, child immunisation, and health education to 320 households across 4 communities in Asante Akim North. Achieved 91% full immunisation coverage in assigned communities — above the district average of 74%. Conducted 140+ home visits in 2023, identifying and referring 18 high-risk pregnancies for facility-based delivery."
The first version describes a role. The second describes a nurse who was performing well above average and actively finding high-risk cases that needed facility care.
Public Health Programme Officer, RMNCAH
Before:
"Coordinated with district health management teams and community health workers to implement maternal and child health programme activities in the region."
After:
"Coordinated RMNCAH programme delivery across 6 districts in the Northern Region, reaching 28,000+ women and children through ITN distribution, ANC outreach, and skilled delivery campaigns. Supervised 4 District Health Officers and coordinated 110 CHVs; programme area recorded a 22% reduction in malaria case incidence over the 18-month project period."
M&E Officer
Before:
"Monitored and evaluated programme activities, collected data, and produced reports for management and donors."
After:
"Designed and managed M&E systems for a 3-year maternal health programme funded by the Global Fund, covering 12 districts and 180+ facilities. Led quarterly data quality audits that improved indicator completeness from 58% to 93%. Produced 6 donor progress reports and 2 mid-term evaluation reports against the project's results framework."
Hospital Administrator
Before:
"Managed hospital administration, human resources, and procurement activities for a regional hospital."
After:
"Managed administrative operations for a 120-bed regional referral hospital with 145 staff and an annual operational budget of GHS 2.4M. Reduced procurement lead times by 35% through a revised supplier evaluation framework; implemented a shift scheduling system that reduced overtime costs by 18% in the first year of operation."
The formula
Most strong CV entries follow a four-part structure:
[Strong action verb] + [what specifically you did] + [at what scale] + [with what result]
You won't always have all four parts — but aim for at least three. The scale (beneficiaries, districts, budget, staff) and the result (coverage rate, cost reduction, improvement percentage) are what make an entry memorable and credible.
On action verbs: avoid "responsible for," "assisted with," "helped to," and "involved in." These are passive constructions that diminish your contribution. Use verbs that show agency: led, managed, designed, implemented, supervised, trained, coordinated, achieved, reduced, increased, improved.
How to find your numbers
The most common thing people say when I explain achievement-based CVs is: "I don't have numbers."
You almost certainly do. Here is where to find them:
DHIMS2: Your facility or district data is in DHIMS2. Coverage rates, service delivery volumes, data quality scores — all of it. Log in and pull the numbers for your time period. Coverage rates are particularly useful because they have context: 91% full immunisation coverage means something when you can say the district average was 74%.
Monthly returns and reports: Every GHS officer submits monthly returns. Go back through your records. They contain the exact numbers you need: home visits conducted, outreach sessions held, referrals made, CHVs supervised.
Training records: If you trained CHVs or health workers, the attendance register is your evidence. "Trained 47 CHVs in IMCI protocols" is concrete. "Conducted CHV training" is not.
Supervision records: How many facilities did you supervise? How many visits per quarter? Supervision frequency is an M&E indicator that INGOs care about specifically.
Budget documents: If you managed a budget or procurement — any budget, at any level — the figure is in the district accounts or project financial reports. "Managed a programme budget of GHS 180,000" is a significant line on a CV that most people leave out entirely.
The hard cases
Some health professionals genuinely don't have outcome data — particularly health educators, health promotion officers, and those in roles where the link between activity and outcome is long and indirect.
In these cases, use activity volume and scale instead:
- Number of community sessions facilitated
- Number of participants reached per session or per year
- Number of facilities, communities, or sub-districts covered
- Number of staff or volunteers trained
- Geographic scope (district, regional, national)
"Facilitated 96 health education sessions for 2,400+ community members across 8 sub-districts in 2023" is achievement-based even without an outcome measure. It tells the recruiter you did this work at a real scale, with real reach.
One more thing
After you've rewritten an entry, read it out loud and ask: does this sound like a person who was genuinely good at their job? If yes, keep it. If it still sounds generic, it probably still is — and it needs another pass.
The Senior Health Officer whose CV I mentioned at the start of this article — the one whose ten years of concrete work had been compressed into one sentence. We rewrote her CV together. Four pages became two. Twelve duty-based entries became twelve achievement-based entries, each with numbers drawn from her own DHIMS2 data and monthly reports.
She applied to a UNICEF programme officer role three weeks later. She got an interview.
The experience was always there. The CV just wasn't showing it.
If you want someone to go through your CV and make this shift specifically — pulling out the achievements you've written around as duties — that's the core of what we do at MasterCV.