The OET Reading sub-test has three parts and 42 questions in 60 minutes. Part A is a 15-minute speed-reading task. Parts B and C share the remaining 45 minutes. This page gives you a short practice set for each part, 14 questions in total. Click an answer to see the explanation.

All texts and questions below are original practice written in the OET format. The hospital, policies and article are fictional, and none of this is official OET material or clinical guidance.

How the Reading sub-test works

In the real Part A you write words from the texts, and spelling must be correct. Here, Part A questions are multiple choice so you can check your answers instantly, but practise finding the exact words: that’s the skill the test rewards.

Part A: Pressure injury prevention

Read Texts A to D quickly. In the test you would have 15 minutes for 20 questions, so you can’t read every word. Scan for headings, numbers and key terms.

Text A: Risk assessment

All adult inpatients must have a Braden Scale assessment completed within 8 hours of admission to the ward. Repeat the assessment daily, after any surgical procedure, and whenever the patient’s condition changes. A total score of 18 or below indicates that the patient is at risk of developing a pressure injury, and a prevention plan must be started. Record the score and the date in the electronic nursing record.

Text B: Repositioning and support surfaces

Patients with a Braden score of 12 or below are considered high risk. Reposition these patients at least every 2 hours, including overnight, and record each change on the repositioning chart. Request a pressure-redistributing mattress from the equipment library on the day the high-risk score is recorded. Offload the heels by placing a pillow lengthways under the calves; do not place pillows directly under the heels. Keep the head of the bed at 30 degrees or lower unless contraindicated.

Text C: Classification

Text D: Referral and reporting

Refer the patient to the Tissue Viability Nurse (TVN) for any Stage 3, Stage 4, unstageable or deep tissue injury. Referrals are made through the electronic referral system; for urgent advice outside office hours, contact the on-call nurse practitioner. With the patient’s consent, photograph the wound at first identification and weekly afterwards. Any pressure injury of Stage 2 or above that develops after admission must also be reported through the incident reporting system within 24 hours.

Part B: Workplace extracts

Extract 1: Email to ward staff

From 1 July, the ward’s current infusion pumps will be withdrawn and replaced with a new model. All registered nurses must complete the 40-minute online training module before using the new pumps. Staff who have not completed the module by 1 July will be rostered to work alongside a trained colleague until they have done so. Completion certificates are recorded automatically; there is no need to send them to the ward manager.

Extract 2: Medication policy

Verbal orders for medication should be used only in an emergency or when the prescriber cannot attend in person or access the electronic prescribing system. The nurse receiving the order must write it down and read it back to the prescriber, including the drug name, dose, route and frequency. The prescriber must sign the order within 24 hours. Verbal orders are never accepted for chemotherapy agents.

Extract 3: Audit summary

The quarterly hand hygiene audit found an overall compliance rate of 91%, up from 84% last quarter. Compliance before patient contact remained the weakest point, particularly among medical staff during ward rounds. Wards are asked to display their results and to nominate a hand hygiene champion, who will receive two hours of protected time each month for observation and teaching.

Part C: Article

Quiet, please: rethinking noise on hospital wards at night

Ask patients what they remember about a hospital stay, and many will mention the noise: alarms, conversations at the nurses’ station, the clatter of trolleys at 2 a.m. For a long time this was treated as an unavoidable side effect of round-the-clock care. Hospitals, after all, exist to treat people, not to help them sleep.

That attitude is now harder to defend. Poor sleep is linked with confusion in older patients, with higher pain scores and with a slower return to normal activity after surgery. A patient who is woken repeatedly is also less able to take in information the next morning, when ward rounds and discharge planning usually happen. Noise, in other words, is not merely uncomfortable; it can work against the treatment itself.

Some of the solutions are surprisingly simple. Several wards have introduced a “quiet period” from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., during which lights are dimmed, phones are set to vibrate and routine observations are grouped together so that patients are disturbed fewer times. Staff on one surgical ward described the change as awkward at first; within a month, the night nurse in charge reported that the ward felt calmer for staff as well as patients.

The harder problem is alarms. Monitors and infusion pumps are designed to sound for safety reasons, and no nurse wants to be responsible for silencing one that matters. Yet a large share of alarms do not lead to any clinical action, and staff who hear constant alerts can become slower to respond to the ones that are important. Reviewing default alarm limits for each patient, rather than accepting the factory settings, is one way to reduce the noise without reducing safety.

None of this requires expensive equipment. What it requires is for night-time rest to be seen as part of care, planned and protected in the same way as medication rounds, rather than something patients must manage on their own with earplugs.

The questions

Tips for OET Reading

• Part A: read the questions, not the texts. Use headings, tables and numbers to jump straight to the answer. Write words exactly as they appear in the text, and check your spelling.
• Part B: identify the purpose. Many questions ask what an extract is telling staff to do, or why it was written. Don’t choose an option just because it repeats a word from the text.
• Part C: follow the writer’s argument. Phrases like “That attitude is now harder to defend” or “Yet” signal a change in direction. Questions often test what the writer thinks, not only what the text says.
• Watch the time. Part A is collected after 15 minutes. In Parts B and C, aim for about 10 minutes on Part B and about 35 minutes on Part C, and answer every question: there’s no penalty for a wrong answer.

More practice

Read the OET test guide for the full format, then try the OET Listening tips or the OET tips and time management page.