OET Listening Part B
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You hear a speech and language therapist briefing a ward nurse about a stroke patient.
SLT: Before I go – Mr Okafor in bed six. I’ve reassessed his swallowing and he’s much better.
Nurse: Can we take him off the thickener, then?
SLT: He managed a full glass of water without coughing – ordinary fluids are fine now.
Nurse: OK. And the lunch trolley’s due soon. Is he having anything, or are we still waiting?
SLT: We can get him started on solids – soft and bite-sized for now. But go carefully – he rushed every spoonful I gave him this morning, so that’s a real risk. So, whatever he’s having – a meal, a drink – someone needs to be sitting beside him the whole time. Could you pass that on to the evening staff?
Nurse: Of course – I’ll put it on the board.
SLT: And I’ll be back on Friday – I’ll see if he can manage a normal texture then.
Nurse: Right – I’ll get all of that into the care plan.
You hear the manager of a renal unit talking to staff about medicine fridges.
One quick item before we finish. From Monday, the way we monitor the medicine fridges is changing. At the moment, whoever opens up in the morning reads the thermometer and writes the number in the logbook – but the audit found a lot of mornings when that didn’t happen at all. So, the hospital has fitted an electronic sensor to every fridge on the unit. The sensors measure the temperature day and night and send the readings to a computer automatically, so the paper log stops completely – that’s one job off your list. But it doesn’t mean we can stop paying attention to the fridges. If a sensor finds the temperature is outside the safe range, it sends an alert to the nurse in charge, and that alert has to be acted on immediately – quarantine the stock and phone pharmacy. Any questions, catch me afterwards.
You hear a paramedic handing over a patient to a nurse in an emergency department.
Nurse: Hello – bring her through to cubicle four. What can you tell me?
Paramedic: This is Margaret – she’s eighty-one. A neighbour found her at the bottom of her stairs this evening. Sounds like a simple trip – she thinks she missed the last step. There was no loss of consciousness – she’s very clear about that. Obs have been stable and she’s been fully alert throughout. Injury-wise, just a graze to the forehead and a sore left wrist.
Nurse: That all sounds fairly reassuring.
Paramedic: One thing you should know – she takes warfarin every day for atrial fibrillation. She’s had a bump to the head while she’s on a blood thinner, so even though it looks minor, that obviously means a scan and proper observation.
Nurse: I’ll get that requested. Is she going back to an empty house?
Paramedic: She lives alone, yes, so that will need some thought – but it’s the warfarin I keep thinking about.
You hear a practice nurse talking to a patient about vaccinations for a trip abroad.
Nurse: So, for where you’re going, the main one you’ll need is the hepatitis B course – and the timing is a bit awkward, I’m afraid.
Patient: Awkward how?
Nurse: Well, normally we’d spread the three doses over a full six months, but you fly in just under five weeks.
Patient: Oh. Does that mean I’ll have to delay the trip?
Nurse: Well, luckily, there’s a faster schedule for exactly this situation – a dose today, one after seven days, one after twenty-one. It only works if we start now. Wait even a fortnight and there won’t be time for all three.
Patient: Right – today it is, then.
Nurse: OK. So, I’ll do the first injection now, and we’ll book the other two in before you leave.
Patient: And that’ll be me covered?
Nurse: You’ll need a booster after twelve months as well, but that can wait until you’re back.
You hear a radiographer talking to a patient who is about to have an MRI scan.
Radiographer: Come through, Mrs Bennett – how are you feeling?
Patient: A bit nervous, to be honest. But my daughter’s had one, so I’ve had the full briefing. I think I know what I’m in for.
Radiographer: Then you know more than most. Did she tell you how cold it is in the scanning room? We keep it cool to stop the machine overheating – it’s the one thing that catches people out. Nobody thinks to mention it.
Patient: Oh. I’d have worn something warmer.
Radiographer: That’s what the blankets are for. Now, the noise you’ll know about.
Patient: Yes, she said the noise was the worst of it – she could hear it through the earplugs.
Radiographer: It is a racket, but you’ll have headphones with music. And about halfway in, I’ll inject some dye through a little tube in your arm – it helps certain tissues show up. You’ll get a cold feeling up the arm, maybe a metallic taste – both completely normal.
You hear a hospital pharmacist talking to a group of junior doctors.
Before you go off to your wards, one thing from last month’s medication incident review. We had four separate near-misses with children’s prescriptions, and every single one came down to the same thing: a dose worked out from a weight that was wrong – either guessed, copied from an old admission, or, in one case, written in pounds instead of kilograms. Luckily, all four were spotted before anything reached a patient, mainly because the nurses questioned them, and all four were written up properly – so the reporting is being done well. The message I want you to take away is a simple one: whenever you prescribe for a child, check that the weight on the chart is today’s weight, actually measured, in kilograms, before you write anything. Yes, in a real emergency you sometimes have to estimate – there are approved formulas for that, and that’s fine. It’s the routine, non-urgent prescribing where the shortcuts are being taken.