OET

The Occupational English Test (OET) is the English test built for healthcare. It is accepted by regulators and employers in the UK (the NMC for nurses and the GMC for doctors), Australia (AHPRA), Ireland, New Zealand, Dubai, Singapore and, through CGFNS and several state boards, the United States. Twelve professions sit it: nursing, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, radiography, speech pathology, optometry, podiatry, dietetics and veterinary science. For most of our readers, nurses from Kerala, the Philippines, Egypt and Nigeria and doctors on the PLAB route, OET is the gate between a job offer abroad and the registration that lets them take it.

The four sub-tests

Listening and Reading are the same for every profession. Writing is a profession-specific letter, usually a referral or discharge letter written from case notes in 45 minutes. Speaking is profession-specific too: two role-plays with an interlocutor who plays a patient, a relative or a carer, while you play yourself. Each role-play gives you about three minutes to read the card and five minutes to speak, so the whole sub-test takes around twenty minutes.

How Speaking is scored

Two sets of criteria apply. The linguistic criteria are intelligibility, fluency, appropriateness of language and resources of grammar and expression. The clinical communication criteria are the ones candidates underestimate: relationship building, understanding and incorporating the patient's perspective, providing structure, information gathering and information giving. In practice this means an examiner rewards you for a warm opening, for checking what the patient already knows, for signposting ("First I'd like to ask about the pain, then we'll talk about the medication") and for closing with a clear plan. Fluent English delivered like a lecture scores lower than slightly slower English delivered like a conversation.

Grades and what regulators ask for

Each sub-test is reported on a 0 to 500 scale and as a letter grade from A to E. Grade B (a score of 350) in all four sub-tests is the common requirement; the UK's NMC accepts a C+ (300) in Writing alongside B in the other three. Check your own regulator's page before you book, because the thresholds are theirs, not OET's.

Dates, formats and fee

OET runs in three formats: OET on Paper at a venue on two Saturdays a month, OET on Computer at a venue, and OET@Home, the last two on around ten dates a month. Book the paper test at least 24 days ahead and the computer test at least seven days ahead. The full test costs AU$587 and a single sub-test AU$315 (OET fee page). The next paper dates are in the block on this page, and all upcoming exam dates are on one calendar.

How to prepare the speaking part

Start with our OET Speaking guide for nurses, which walks through the role-play format, the criteria and full sample dialogues, then build the ward language with English for nurses or English for doctors. Then practise out loud against a clock: play the clinician, explain a diagnosis, calm an anxious relative, negotiate a reluctant patient's medication. On TalkDrill you can run these scenes with an AI patient in a timed speaking session and listen back for the three things examiners mark down most: no empathy statement, no structure, and medical jargon the patient would not understand.