OET VS PTE

If you are a healthcare professional, you may be confused at some point about whether to take the Occupational English Test (OET) or the Pearson English Test (PTE Academic) for English language proficiency proof for licence registration or immigration. Both tests differ in terms of various factors elaborated in the table below:

Difference between OET & PTE

If you read the differences between OET and PTE closely, you will notice the advantages of OET outweigh the PTE test for a medical healthcare professional, or more specifically, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists and dentists. OET has been specifically designed to test your communication in clinical contexts, rather than general, unrelated content, for the assessment of listening and reading skills. Therefore, you don’t have to struggle learning a vast vocabulary, practice report writing or drafting essays or summaries required in the PTE test.

Additionally, global recognition by dental and medical councils makes OET worth taking with confidence. Although PTE appears to be cheaper, the cost increases if you need to retake it. Additionally, you must invest in preparation and authentic resources to prepare for the PTE test, which indirectly makes it more expensive. OET, on the other hand, offers the flexibility to retake any single subtest and requires less time or tutoring expenses, as you are already in the profession and well-equipped with medical communication vocabulary and context.

Why Nurses in Australia and New Zealand Prefer OET?

Nursing boards like AHPRA in Australia and NCZN in New Zealand accept OET as their criterion for nurses and doctors as proof of their English proficiency. Therefore, many healthcare professionals prefer OET over PTE. Besides, PTE is undergoing regular changes and addition of new questions types making preparation more challenging and uncertain. On the other hand, the OET format is well established and has remained the same for the past many years.

OET or PTE: Which Test is Easier for Nurses?

If you are a nurse, you are already familiar with various medical terms, clinical vocabulary, and healthcare settings. This gives you a benefit over the content and context set in the OET test, and therefore requires less time for preparation of the test. For PTE, on the other hand, you have to work rigorously in improving your vocabulary, which is direly needed in terms of listening to content in audios, reading comprehension passages, and writing tasks. OET is comparatively more straightforward due to its simulation tasks, which are based on real-life experiences of nurses and doctors.

OET or PTE: Why is OET better for Healthcare Professionals?

For healthcare professionals, OET provides an opportunity to score higher on the first attempt, as they only need to focus on test-taking skills. Their language skills just need a refresh or slight preparation to fulfil any foreign medical council’s licensure requirement. To understand the benefits of OET over PTE, consider the following:

How can I prepare for OET or PTE to achieve high scores?

Having explained the differences between OET and PTE, we would like to help you with the OET course and PTE course, providing authentic resources, practice tests and guides to prepare for either of the tests. You can choose any test at your convenience; however, we recommend taking an OET mock test and a PTE test to make an informed decision about selecting the test that’s right for you. The results of the mock tests will not only give you estimated scores in each of the tests but also guide you better, and you can confidently book the exam afterwards.