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OET (Occupational English Test) assesses the language skills of healthcare professionals who aim to work in an English-speaking environment. The OET has test versions for 12 healthcare professions and optometry is one of the version. It assesses the listening, reading, and writing skills of the individuals. In this article, we deal with the writing section and you get to learn how to take an OET writing optometry sample test.
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OET Writing Optometry Test
The time duration of the OET Writing Optometry test is 40 minutes. Apart from this, you will get 5 minutes of reading time. Utilize the reading time to understand the paper and make mental notes of what you will be writing.
The OET Writing Optometry test includes three possible types of letters:
- Referral
- Discharge
- Transfer
The letter should be of approximately 180 to 200 words.
The reader of the letter could be three different healthcare professionals, so the letter could be form:
- Optometrist to optometrist
- Optometrist to doctor
- Optometrist to specialist
You should be prepared for any of these letters. You will be handling different types of patients, so you should have the language to put your assessments in an effective way that captivates the examiner.
How to Utilize the Reading Time?
1: What is the primary purpose of a patient’s discharge summary?
During the reading time, go to the writing section and check who you are writing to and what is their job role. Then go back to the case note and check what is your task, what diagnosis was done and what treatment had been initially given.
Ask the following questions to yourself:
- Is the case note relevant to the situation?
- Will this case note affect how the reader continues care for the patient?
If the answer to any of these questions is ‘yes‘, then you have to include these information in the letter, or else you can omit it. Make mental notes of these and get an idea of how you will be presenting it. You should also use more scientific terms than mentioned in the case note.
Important points to be noted in the letter:
- Name of the patient
- Date of birth
- Patient’s history (if relevant)
If you still have time, go through the case note once again.
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Writing the Letter
- Once the writing time starts, underline the points that you have decided to include in the letter. In the bank page behind the test paper, make a rough draft. You can take around 5 minutes for this.
- In the first or introductory paragraph, mention the trauma and if it is an emergency case, highlight it.
- In the middle paragraphs, mention the patient’s condition, diagnosis, measures taken by the patient and any relevant test information.
- In the final paragraph, provide the recommendations and repeat your request if it needs emergency assessment.
- Once the draft is ready, you have a clear plan in mind and you are all set to write the letter in the 35 minutes left.
- Start with the reader’s name and address that is given in the Writing Task section.
- Underneath it, write the date.
- Next write the greeting. You can mention the person’s name if it is given, or else you can mention the designation.
- The greeting should be followed by the Re line. This line mentions the name and age or date of birth of the patient.
- Now start writing the letter. Remember that it should be written in paragraphs. You should have at least three paragraphs – introduction (the reason for writing) , details of the case and finally the recommendations.
- You can then end the letter with Yours faithfully or Yours sincerely and your job title, that is optometrist.
- Once you have written the letter, go through it to make sure that you have included all the required information. If you find anything irrelevant, eliminate it. Imagine you are the recipient of the letter. When you got through it, you should be able to understand the patients situation and what you need to do for her. Make edits if necessary.
Tips to Improve OET Writing Optometry Test Skills
- Go through a lot of sample papers and understand the language used in the letters. Compare the way write with those found in the sample papers.
- Do not jump from one sample paper to the other. Take your time to understand your mistakes and work on it.
- Assess your writing against the assessment criteria. You can download it for free from the OET website.
- Do a grammar and language test of your letter your tools that are available online. Learn from the errors and also check for vocabulary that can be used.
With the right approach, you can certainly excel in OET Writing Optometry test.
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