In the speaking component of the OET exam, you are given a clinical scenario where a patient approaches you usually with a concern. The concerns can be classed generally into two classes: Concerns about the ILLNESS and concerns about the TREATMENT aka non-compliance. Since there is a lot to cover, I will give tips on only the first class of concerns in this month’s blog.

1) THE ILLNESS.

Generally a lot of patient’s fears/reservations/anger stems from the unknown. Some of these medical diagnosis can appear foreboding simply by the fact that it comes from the doctor or the name itself. So most of the time this can be resolved by simply explaining all the aspects of the illness in a clear and reasonable way.

Some aspects of the illness that you may have to explain are;

-What the exact nature of the diagnosis is.

-How seriously it will affect their health and daily function.

-What the treatments/therapy will involve- it is important to explain why the treatment is given.

-What the prognosis will be.

Since this component of the exam will not be assessed on the content/medical knowledge of the exam candidate, you do not need to know every illness under the sun to prepare for this. However, you may need to know some common ones just so you do not get nervous for stuck with what to say. Common ones could be hypertension, diabetes, stroke/heart attack, quitting smoking/alcohol, immunizations etc.  

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e.g. I understand that you are worried about your hypertension. Hypertension is an elevation of your blood pressure. This means that your heart has to worker a lot harder than normal to pump blood around your body.

If it isn’t treated there is an increased chance that your heart may fail or that you may get a heart attack or stroke. Therefore, it is vital that you keep your blood pressure under control.

Blood pressure is affected by many things.

Firstly, how much water and salt is in your body. If you have too much salt in your diet, this can make your blood volume greater and therefore increase your blood pressure.

Secondly, the condition of your blood vessels. If your blood vessels becomes less elastic due to age, damage from smoking or too much fat deposits from a fatty diet and not enough exercise, then you will more likely not be able to regulate your blood pressure.

Thirdly, different levels of hormones can be released by various triggers such as stress, drinking, obesity, diabetes etc that contribute to or worsen the hypertension.

It is a lot to take in, but I hope this helps you to see why it is so important for you to make various changes in your lifestyle. Reducing your salt and fat intake in your diet, exercising, avoiding smoking and alcohol are crucial for lowering your blood pressure.

If you can do this you will be able to significantly reduce the risk of the illnesses I mentioned earlier which may lead to early death. Lifelong intake of blood pressure lowering medication is preferrably a last resort so I would advise you to take these lifestyle intervention measures first.

-Megan Lee, OET Trainer