Good news for foreign nurses who want to work in Ireland! The Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland (NMBI) announces that they will also accept Occupational English Test (OET) as proof of language proficiency starting January 1, 2018.
Ireland followed what United Kingdom had decided recently, that OET result is an alternative for International English Language Testing System (IELTS) in Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) registration starting November 1, 2017.
NMBI first revealed this welcome change in their English requirement in the latest issue of their monthly EZine for October 2017. The news simply stated the following:
OET now accepted by NMBI
From 1 January 2018 we will accept Occupational English Test (OET), alongside the International English Language Testing System (IELTS).
Further information will be available on our website in due course.
Currently, NMBI only accepts IELTS Academic and IELTS Academic for UKVI as evidence of English language competency for overseas nurses trained outside EU or EEA countries, or what they call as Group 3. Accepted minimum scores are as follows:
Listening – 6.5
Reading – 6.5
Writing – 7.0
Speaking – 7.0
Overall – 7.0
No details yet on what OET Grade will NMBI accept, or if it will follow NMC UK’s Grade B standard for English competency.
We will surely post updates on Ireland’s OET requirement as soon as they will give more details about it, so please keep it here. Also, follow our page Nurse Updates in Facebook, share this post to all nurses and midwives aiming for Irelad job opportunities. [Photo credits: https://www.nmbi.ie/]