OET Writing (2.0)

The writing task is a letter- writing one, with content already given in the question in note form; which is typical of a health professional’s way of recording his patient’s

•   Demographic details
•   Name, age, sex, address, occupation
•   Date of admission
•   Date of examination
•   Chief complaints
•   History of the present illness, treatment in the hospital so far for the particular illness
•   Past history
•   Past medications or drug history
•   Family history
•   Personal history like diet, appetite, sleep, bowel and bladder
•   Present diagnosis
•   General physical examination includes vital signs such as pulse, BP, respiratory rate, temperature, hydration.
•   Investigations management like lab reports, x-ray, scan and course of treatment, final diagnosis and discharge plan assessment.

All or some of these details may appear in the question paper and it is important not to write any of the sentences in your letter in note- form. It is important to bear in mind the audience or the recipient of the letter:

•   to whom are you writing
•   the PURPOSE of your letter
•   What result do you expect your communication to make

Whether to use lay terms in a letter meant for a patient’s relative , medical terminology; in case you are writing to a healthcare professional, depends on whoever the reader of your letter may be. It is essential to include only the information directly and indirectly related to the purpose and leave out details irrelevant to the purpose, hence it is not possible to pinpoint certain details as unimportant, as the parameters for relevance and irrelevance vary with the writing task question.

While putting in necessary content avoid using flowery and verbose language as clarity and concision are vital factors in medical reporting. Your letter may be a letter of referral, letter of transfer and letter of updation, or a letter of a specialist’s feedback on advanced investigation.

Your letter gains clarity from three things
•   From giving accurate information as stated in the case notes
•   From conciseness
•   From grammatical correctness: even though it is just one criterion it contributes to clarity by the use of simple and complex sentences, the ability to switch between varied sentence structures for effective writing.

In the criterion genre and style the appropriate register and tone should be kept throughout the letter.

Register is the use of a particular set of vocabulary and expressions that are special to the context of medical or healthcare settings and the particular use of medical terminology while writing between medical professionals. On the other hand, if the reader of the letter is a non-medical person one has to limit the language to the lay terms of their medical equivalents. Tone has to be kept formal without integrating overtly artificial expressions, keeping the usage quite flexible, normal, factual and objective. It is not recommended to use abbreviations while keeping its use to the minimum, using only commonly accepted short forms.

The organization and layout is the standard one with the 4 paragraph structure (or more if you wish to) and winding up the letter using a “complimentary close” which again confirms the purpose at the same time helping to maintain a polite tone.

As far as medical communication is concerned, clarity and brevity are the essential elements to make sure no valuable service time is wasted and that it is easily understood by other medics in the unit and to whomever it is accessible, in the healthcare settings. So the language has to be free from vocabulary, grammar, spelling and punctuation errors as long as the writing doesn’t affect the level of understanding and the easiness of getting the message across.