OET Writing guide (nursing)

OET Writing for nurses

Nurses write different letters from doctors, to different readers, about different things. A nursing letter is rarely about diagnosis; it is about what the patient can do, what support they need and what could go wrong next. This guide brings together the letter types, content choices and study habits that matter most for nursing candidates.

The OET Writing test in brief

In the Writing sub-test you write one letter based on a set of case notes. You have 5 minutes of reading time, when you cannot write, followed by 40 minutes to write. The task instructions ask for a letter body of approximately 180–200 words. Your letter is assessed against six criteria: Purpose (scored out of 3) and Content, Conciseness & Clarity, Genre & Style, Organisation & Layout and Language (each scored out of 7). Our criteria guide explains each one.

Grade requirements differ between regulators and can change. Always check the official OET website and your nursing regulator for the current requirements that apply to you.

Letter types nurses commonly practise

For worked examples, see the nursing discharge letter sample and the transfer letter sample. Although it is a medicine task, the referral letter sample is also useful for seeing how urgency and purpose are expressed.

Readers and tone

Genre & Style rewards letters pitched correctly at the reader. Nurses write to a wider range of readers than most professions, which makes this criterion especially important.

Writing to another nurse

Use professional nursing terminology such as "pressure injury", "mobilises with a four-wheeled walker" or "subcutaneous". Expand ward shorthand like "BNO", "NBM" or "assist x2". The tone is collegial and practical, with polite requests: "I would be grateful if you could…".

Writing to a doctor

Keep the focus on nursing observations and concerns, stated precisely. Report findings factually and avoid offering diagnoses the notes do not support.

Writing to an allied health professional

Explain the clinical context briefly, then be very specific about the input you want: a home safety assessment, dietary review or equipment for showering.

Writing to a carer or parent

This is where many nurses lose marks. Replace medical terms with everyday words ("high blood sugar" rather than "hyperglycaemia"), explain the reason behind instructions, and keep sentences short. Warmth is appropriate; over-familiarity is not.

Nursing-specific content selection

Nursing case notes are long and often written as a day-by-day ward record. Your task is to turn that record into a picture of the patient now and what happens next. These five areas usually carry the relevant information:

1. Care needs. Help required with hygiene, dressing, eating, continence and wound care. Describe function precisely, not vaguely ("needs help with showering", not "not fully independent").
2. Mobility and safety. Walking aids, number of assistants, distance, stairs, falls risk, and any equipment the reader must arrange.
3. Medications. Prioritise new, changed, stopped, time-limited and high-risk medicines, such as anticoagulants, insulin, opioids and antibiotics with end dates. Unchanged long-term medicines are often lower priority.
4. Education provided. What the patient or family has been taught and how well they understood it. This tells the reader what to reinforce and prevents duplication.
5. Follow-up. Appointments, dressing changes, suture or staple removal, blood tests and monitoring targets, with accurate dates and thresholds.

Social background is included only when it changes care: a carer with limited ability to help, living alone, stairs at home, or a language barrier. Hobbies, former careers and distant surgical history are usually distractors.

Common pitfalls for nurses

Writing the ward diary

Copying the notes date by date ("On 3/9 she was… On 4/9 she was…") produces a long letter that buries current needs. Summarise the hospital stay in two or three sentences and organise the rest by topic.

A purpose that does not ask for anything

"I am writing regarding Mrs X, who is being discharged today" is incomplete. Add what you want the reader to do: "…to request home visits to monitor her wound and support her insulin administration".

Handover shorthand

Nurses are trained to hand over quickly, so abbreviations like "obs stable", "BSL", "PRN" and "TDS" slip into letters. In OET Writing, write them in full sentences unless the abbreviation is universally understood.

Listing every medication and observation

A full medication chart and a full set of vital signs rarely serve the reader. Choose the items that require action and summarise the rest, or omit them.

Wrong register for lay readers

A letter to a mother about her child's asthma written as if to a respiratory nurse will lose marks, however accurate it is.

Losing the most important risk in the middle

If the key issue is that nobody at home can check blood glucose, it should appear prominently, not after the patient's retirement plans. See common OET Writing mistakes for more examples.

A 4-week OET Writing practice plan for nurses

This plan assumes about 45–60 minutes a day, five days a week. Adjust it to your schedule, but keep the pattern of writing, checking and rewriting.

A simple checking routine for every letter

• Purpose: Does my first paragraph say who the patient is, why I am writing and what I want?
• Content: Can I justify every sentence by what the reader will do?
• Conciseness: Have I summarised the ward stay rather than listing events?
• Style: Have I removed all note form and ward shorthand?
• Organisation: Does each paragraph have one topic?
• Language: Have I checked tenses, articles and subject–verb agreement?

The free LetterScore AI checker can speed up this routine by estimating a score for each criterion and quoting the parts of your letter that affected it. Use it as a practice aid alongside official OET preparation materials, not as a substitute for them.