Occupational English Test Writing for Nurses

What is the writing sub-test like?

The OET Writing sub-test for nurses is a test with a specific focus on nursing and takes 45 minutes.
The task is usually to write a letter of referral. The referral may be to a nursing home or a community nurse. The task may also be the writing of a letter to advise or inform a patient or group e.g. a school nurse may send a letter to inform students and parents about a health issue.

Many nurses find this task difficult as it is rare for nurses to write letters of referral any more. These days, di

Chapter1 Outline of the referral letter

What is the writing sub-test like?

The OET Writing sub-test for nurses is a test with a specific focus on nursing and takes 45 minutes.
The task is usually to write a letter of referral. The referral may be to a nursing home or a community nurse. The task may also be the writing of a letter to advise or inform a patient or group e.g. a school nurse may send a letter to inform students and parents about a health issue.

Many nurses find this task difficult as it is rare for nurses to write letters of referral any more. These days, discharge letters are written on the computer often following a given template. Copies are sent as referral letters. The writing task is still relevant for nurses, however, as nurses need to be able to select and organise relevant information to write nursing notes, incident reports and variances on clinical pathways.

You will receive the task and stimulus materials so you can prepare your letter of referral. The task is found at the end of the stimulus materials. It will ask you to write a letter of referral to a particular person. The stimulus material is similar to the patient’s discharge information you may be familiar with. The material will include personal and medical background and may contain a discharge plan as well.

The first five minutes of the test is reading time. During this time, you may study the task and notes but may not write, underline or make any notes. This means that you will need to work out very quickly which information is needed for your letter. Whilst much of the information is included in the discharge plan, other information may be scattered throughout the stimulus material. It is a good idea to have the general outline of a letter in your memory so you can visualize where the information is going to be written.

For the remaining 40 minutes you may write your response to the task. You receive a printed answer booklet in which you must write your response. This also has space for rough work. You may write in pen or pencil.

Chapter1 Outline of the referral letter

What is the writing sub-test like?

The OET Writing sub-test for nurses is a test with a specific focus on nursing and takes 45 minutes.

The task is usually to write a letter of referral. The referral may be to a nursing home or a community nurse. The task may also be the writing of a letter to advise or inform a patient or group e.g. a school nurse may send a letter to inform students and parents about a health issue.

Many nurses find this task difficult as it is rare for nurses to write letters of referral any more. These days, discharge letters are written on the computer often following a given template. Copies are sent as referral letters. The writing task is still relevant for nurses, however, as nurses need to be able to select and organise relevant information to write nursing notes, incident reports and variances on clinical pathways.

You will receive the task and stimulus materials so you can prepare your letter of referral. The task is found at the end of the stimulus materials. It will ask you to write a letter of referral to a particular person. The stimulus material is similar to the patient’s discharge information you may be familiar with. The material will include personal and medical background and may contain a discharge plan as well.

The first five minutes of the test is reading time. During this time, you may study the task and notes but may not write, underline or make any notes. This means that you will need to work out very quickly which information is needed for your letter. Whilst much of the information is included in the discharge plan, other information may be scattered throughout the stimulus material. It is a good idea to have the general outline of a letter in your memory so you can visualize where the information is going to be written.

For the remaining 40 minutes you may write your response to the task. You receive a printed answer booklet in which you must write your response. This also has space for rough work. You may write in pen or pencil.

Make sure you spend a few minutes making a plan of your letter. You need to set out the plan of each paragraph including the points for each paragraph.

Do a ‘trial run’ of your writing style at home using a ruled sheet of paper. How many words on average do you write per line? Remember the word limit is 180 to 200 words for the body of the letter. Each paragraph (assuming you write 4 paragraphs per letter) will contain a maximum of 50