The Occupational English Test (OET) is the internationally recognised English language assessment designed specifically for healthcare professionals. Unlike general English tests, every task in the OET uses authentic healthcare scenarios — patient consultations, case notes, referral letters, and clinical recordings. This free printable PDF lets you practise all four sub-tests at your own pace and build the language precision required for registration in the UK, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and other English-speaking countries.
The OET Listening sub-test contains three parts. Part A presents two consultation recordings between a healthcare professional and a patient. You take notes on a printed form while the audio plays — a format that mirrors real clinical documentation. Part B consists of six short healthcare workplace extracts, each followed by one multiple-choice question. Part C features two longer healthcare-related talks or interviews with six multiple-choice questions each. Total listening time is approximately 40 minutes. The sub-test assesses comprehension of medical instructions, patient history, treatment plans, and professional discussions.
Reading is divided into three parts. Part A is a 15-minute skimming and scanning task: you read up to four short texts on a single healthcare topic and answer summary questions by locating specific information quickly. Part B presents six short workplace texts (notices, guidelines, emails) with one multiple-choice question each. Part C contains two longer healthcare-related articles — one accessible and one more academic — each followed by eight multiple-choice questions. Strong reading performance requires comfort with clinical terminology, dense informational prose, and evaluating the purpose and tone of professional communications.
The OET Writing sub-test requires you to produce a letter — typically a referral letter, discharge summary, or transfer of care letter — based on a set of case notes. The task is profession-specific: doctors receive doctor-focused case notes and write to relevant specialists, while nurses, physiotherapists, pharmacists, and professionals in ten other healthcare disciplines receive notes tailored to their own clinical role. Assessors evaluate task fulfilment, conciseness, appropriateness of register, layout and organisation, language accuracy, and the correct use of medical terminology.
The Speaking sub-test consists of two role-play consultations, each approximately five minutes long. A trained interlocutor acts as the patient while you take the role of the healthcare professional. You receive a role-play card two or three minutes before each task to prepare. Each scenario replicates a realistic consultation — taking a history, explaining a diagnosis, providing discharge instructions, or addressing a patient concern. Responses are recorded and assessed on nine criteria including intelligibility, fluency, appropriateness of language, and the ability to communicate empathy and clinical information clearly.
OET is available for 12 healthcare professions: dentistry, dietetics, medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, optometry, pharmacy, physiotherapy, podiatry, radiography, speech pathology, and veterinary science. Each profession receives writing and speaking materials drawn from its own clinical context. OET scores are reported on a scale of 0–500 in each sub-test. A score of 350 (equivalent to CEFR B2 upper) is the minimum accepted by many registration bodies including the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) in the UK and AHPRA in Australia, though some professions or destinations require 400 (CEFR C1). For healthcare workers choosing between OET and IELTS, the consensus is that OET is easier for clinicians because the contexts are familiar — you are reading about patients and writing about patients rather than navigating abstract academic topics.
Print the full PDF and treat each sub-test as a separate timed session. For the Listening section, read the questions first, then play the audio once — exactly as the real test allows. For Reading Part A, strictly limit yourself to 15 minutes to build the skimming speed the real test demands. For the Writing task, draft your letter by hand to replicate test-day conditions, then review it against the OET scoring criteria: task fulfilment, conciseness, appropriate register, layout, and language accuracy. For Speaking, record yourself on a mobile device and listen back — this reveals pronunciation patterns and hesitation habits you may not notice in real time. After each sub-test, review your errors before moving to the next one rather than scoring everything at the end.
Both OET and IELTS Academic are accepted for healthcare registration in most English-speaking countries, but the tests suit different candidates. OET uses exclusively clinical content — consultations, ward notes, patient handovers — which means healthcare professionals can draw on professional knowledge to understand context, reducing cognitive load compared to IELTS abstract academic passages. The OET Writing task is also more structured: you follow a letter format with a defined recipient and purpose, whereas IELTS Academic Writing requires an essay on a general topic. Conversely, IELTS is available at more test centres globally and results are available to a wider range of visa and registration pathways beyond healthcare. If your target is UK NMC registration, Australian AHPRA registration, or Irish CORU registration for nursing or allied health, OET is generally the preferred route because regulatory bodies are familiar with the scoring system and the test content directly reflects the English you will use at work.