Knowledge Bank
Practising difficult conversations with an AI patient
Back to Menu ↩ Good doctors do not simply tell patients what to do. They explain the options, listen to the patient’s values and concerns,
September 28, 2026
What’s the difference between IELTS writing 6.5 and 7.0?
At the beginning of 2016, the NMC introduced a new regulation which required all nurses from outside the UK to achieve a score of 7.0 or above (out of 9.0) in all four areas of the Academic IELTS exam – reading, listening, writing and speaking – in order to obtain a license to practise as nurses in the UK.
The purpose of this was to address concerns over patient safety in relation to the ability of overseas nurses to communicate effectively in English. The score needed for Writing was recently reduced to 6.5. SLC’s Programme Manager Beth explores the difference between 6.5 and 7.0 in this detailed report.
Are you recruiting from overseas and need IELTS or PTE Academic preparation for your candidates as part of the process?
SLC works with healthcare employers and international healthcare recruitment companies around the world to prepare doctors and nurses from around the world to achieve the IELTS or PTE Academic English test scores they need to register in English-speaking countries such as the US and UK.
Back to Menu ↩ Good doctors do not simply tell patients what to do. They explain the options, listen to the patient’s values and concerns,
Back to Menu ↩ Metaphors can tell us a lot about how people think. A new study, published in Acta Psychologica, uses metaphors to explore
Back to Menu ↩ In many countries, a large part of the healthcare workforce has trained overseas. In the UK for example, international medical graduates
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