The Occupational English Test (OET) is an English test for healthcare professionals. Instead of general topics, it uses the situations you meet at work: consultations, case notes, referral letters, hospital guidelines and conversations with patients. Nurses and doctors take it most often to register with a regulator in the UK, Australia, the US and other English-speaking countries. This guide explains each sub-test, how the scoring works and who accepts it.

This site is an independent practice site. It isn’t affiliated with OET or Cambridge Boxhill Language Assessment, and nothing on it is official OET test material.

Who it’s for

OET is offered for 12 professions: dentistry, dietetics, medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, optometry, pharmacy, physiotherapy, podiatry, radiography, speech pathology and veterinary science. You choose the version for your own profession when you book.

The most common reasons to take it:

• UK nursing and midwifery registration. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) accepts OET (Nursing version) and IELTS Academic as English language tests.
• Australian registration. Ahpra and the National Boards, including the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, accept OET.
• US nursing and medicine. TruMerit (formerly CGFNS International) accepts OET for its VisaScreen certificate, and Intealth ECFMG accepts OET Medicine for international medical graduates.
• Canadian nursing registration. The Canadian Nurse Regulators Collaborative has recommended OET scores, but each provincial or territorial regulator decides whether to adopt them.

OET is a test for professional registration, not a general immigration test. For example, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) does not list OET among its approved tests for economic immigration. Always check what the specific organization asks for. See OET score requirements by country for the numbers.

The four sub-tests

Sub-test	What you do	Questions or tasks	Time
Listening	Health consultations, workplace extracts and presentations	42 questions in 3 parts	About 40 minutes
Reading	Short clinical texts, workplace extracts and two longer articles	42 questions in 3 parts	60 minutes
Writing	A letter based on case notes	1 task	45 minutes
Speaking	Two role-plays with an interlocutor	2 role-plays	About 20 minutes

Listening and Reading are the same for all 12 professions. Writing and Speaking are specific to your profession: a nurse writes a nursing letter and talks to a patient as a nurse, and a doctor does the same as a doctor.

Listening

Three parts, about 40 minutes, and you hear each recording once.

• Part A (24 marks): two consultations between a health professional and a patient. You complete notes using the words you hear.
• Part B (6 marks): six short extracts from the workplace, such as a team briefing or a handover, with one multiple-choice question each.
• Part C (12 marks): two longer recordings, such as a presentation or an interview, with six multiple-choice questions each.

On paper you get two minutes at the end to check your answers. On computer, there’s a short pause after each question instead. More detail in the OET Listening tips.

Reading

Three parts in 60 minutes.

• Part A (20 marks, 15 minutes): four short texts on one clinical topic. You match information to the texts, answer short questions and complete sentences, writing words from the texts. The Part A papers are collected after exactly 15 minutes.
• Part B (6 marks): six short workplace extracts, such as policies, emails and guidelines, each with one three-option question.
• Part C (16 marks): two longer articles on healthcare topics, each with eight four-option questions. Part C tests opinion, attitude and meaning as well as detail.

Parts B and C share the remaining 45 minutes. Spelling must be correct in Part A. Try the OET Reading practice for all three parts.

Writing

One letter in 45 minutes. The first five minutes are reading time for the case notes, then you have 40 minutes to write. Most nursing and medicine tasks are referral letters, but you may also get a transfer, discharge or advice letter. OET recommends a body of about 180 to 200 words. Assessors mark six criteria: Purpose, Content, Conciseness and Clarity, Genre and Style, Organisation and Layout, and Language. See the OET referral letter guide.

Speaking

About 20 minutes in total. The interlocutor starts with a short warm-up conversation about your professional background, which isn’t assessed. Then you do two role-plays. For each one, you get a role-play card and three minutes to prepare, and the role-play itself lasts about five minutes. The interlocutor plays a patient or client, or a patient’s relative or carer (for veterinary science, an animal’s owner or carer).

The recording is marked later by trained assessors on four linguistic criteria (Intelligibility, Fluency, Appropriateness of Language, and Resources of Grammar and Expression) and five clinical communication criteria (relationship-building, understanding and incorporating the patient’s perspective, providing structure, information-gathering and information-giving). More in the OET Speaking role-play guide.

How OET is scored

Each sub-test gets its own score from 0 to 500, in steps of 10, and a letter grade. There is no overall score: regulators set a minimum for each sub-test.

Grade	Score
A	450 to 500
B	350 to 440
C+	300 to 340
C	200 to 290
D	100 to 190
E	0 to 90

Grade B starts at 350. It’s the most common target. OET says candidates who reach grade B in Listening and Reading typically have at least 30 of the 42 marks, but the exact number changes slightly between test versions. Some regulators accept C+ (300) in Writing, and since April 2026 Ahpra sets numeric minimums for each sub-test instead of grades.

Ways to take the test

OET is available on paper at a test venue, on computer at a test venue, and as OET@Home in some locations. Not every regulator accepts every format. The NMC accepts all three. Ahpra and TruMerit don’t accept at-home tests. Check before you book.

OET says results for computer-based tests can be ready within about 48 hours of finishing all four sub-tests, and paper results take longer, often around 12 days.

How to prepare

1. Find your target. Check the exact scores your regulator asks for, and whether it lets you combine two sittings.
2. Learn the formats. Each part has its own task type, and Part A in both Reading and Listening rewards speed and accurate spelling.
3. Practise letters against the clock. Aim to plan in the reading time and finish the letter with five minutes left to check.
4. Rehearse role-plays aloud. Structure, empathy and checking understanding are marked, not only grammar.
5. Take timed practice tests. Time management is one of the main reasons candidates miss grade B. See OET tips and time management.

Wondering whether OET or IELTS suits you better? Read OET vs IELTS for nurses.