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OET for Nurses: Why Taking OET is Often the Right Choice

Hello from the E2 Team! If we have learned something in the last few years is that health professionals and especially nurses have a crucial role in society and deserve all our appreciation and respect.

We want all the nurses that decide to study with us to achieve their English proficiency goals, that’s why today we want to share with you the top three reasons why OET is often the right choice for nurses if they want to relocate to an English speaking country.

Reason #1 OET for Nurses is tailored to your profession

If you’re a nurse, you are probably comfortable working in a fast-paced environment, dealing with difficult patients, making decisions under pressure, and understanding complex information quickly.

These skills make you perfectly suited to the various OET sections, as each one mirrors real-life scenarios that nurses face in the workplace.

For example, the OET speaking section is a role-play exercise in which you must interact with a “patient” who has come in with a medical complaint. In the OET writing section, you must write a discharge letter using relevant information about a patient under your (hypothetical!) care.

The benefit of preparing for tasks like these is that nurses get a chance to practice important professional skills that they will need to showcase in an English speaking context (e.g. UK hospitals). It’s crucial to remember that moving to another country usually comes with massive cultural shifts on top of the language differences.

Preparing for the OET allows nurses the chance to practice highly valuable professional skills that may look slightly different in an English speaking context, like bedside manner expectations and appropriate follow-up questioning procedures.

If you are a nurse thinking about taking OET you might enjoy reading:

How much time do you need to prepare for OET?

Many of our students have worked as nurses for many years, but still, find it odd when they begin working in a hospital in the UK or Australia and find that they are given much more decision-making responsibility than they are used to.

Furthermore, North-American hospitals in particular are very “patient-centric”, which means that patients often ask more questions or require more in-depth explanations than a foreign-trained nurse may be used to.

Bottom Line: OET for nurses hoping to immediately find work in countries like the UK is a great way to “kill two birds with one stone”. In addition to learning the appropriate English concepts to pass the test, nurses get to improve skills that will serve them well in their next workplace, and hopefully will come out of the OET experience with professional growth on top of their language success!

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Many of our OET Students have succeeded in their OET and moved to the UK as registered nurses!

Reason #2 The OET vocabulary is the same you use on a daily basis at work

OET is extra applicable to medical professionals because it emphasises medical vocabulary that you’ll be very comfortable with if you are a nurse.

While the PTE, IELTS and TOEFL require that you learn complex English vocabulary that you will probably never use in real life (how many nurses need to write about why they think “education is a critical element to prosperity” in their workplace?)

In general, the nurses we prepare for OET feel a lot more comfortable and confident when they open up a practice exercise and see words like “aetiology” “rheumatic fever” and “sterilization” (for the record, these words would absolutely terrify me!).

Bottom line: If you’re a pro with medical vocabulary, the OET will probably intimidate you a lot less than some of the other English tests out there!

Reason #3 The OET for nurses is suited for ‘pencil and paper’ and ‘face-to-face’ people

We live in exciting times when it comes to technology, and it is pretty cool that lots of exams have become computer-based and offer all kinds of fancy automated grading and voice recognition! However, some people will just always feel more comfortable picking up a pencil and writing something out by hand.

In many hospital environments, medical professionals still use paper-based charts and other materials every day, and nurses talk to real patients in their workplace environments, not computers. Many nurses have come to us and complained about how strange and uncomfortable it felt to talk at a computer during exams like the PTE, and how they felt they would have done much better interacting with a human being.

Because the OET is paper-based and uses human examiners to test speaking, E2 Test Prep students coming from nursing backgrounds often consider it the ideal test. The “traditional” format sets them at ease, and this (combined with the familiar vocabulary and content) boosts their confidence quite a bit. One thing we definitely know from experience is that a little confidence goes a long way.

E2 Test Prep is an online OET preparation provider, our practice materials can easily be done on paper and we encourage students watching our live classes to take real notes!

Did you know E2 Test Prep is an official partner of the OET test?

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Join over 1.5 million students that have passed their exams with E2 Test Prep. Click here to find out more!

One last thing to note is that although IELTS also offers paper-based, face-face testing, it’s not tailored to nurses in the same way that OET is. If you want the best of both worlds in terms of professional relevance and more traditional test methods, OET wins out.

Bottom Line: If you’re a nurse and you’re intimidated by English proficiency tests like TOEFL, or undecided over PTE or OET, the OET is probably a great option for you.

We have prepared an amazing video about how to pass OET in 2022! Make sure to subscribe to our youtube channel for the latest OET content.

How to pass OET in 2022 with Jay!

Already Convinced?

There you have it. Those are the reasons why we always recommend OET for nurses who want to move overseas. Log in to your E2 Test Prep account today, brush up on your impressive medical vocabulary, make use of all our test prep resources and book your OET test date with confidence!

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If you love podcasts, you can’t miss Everyday English with E2. There’s a new episode every week!

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