English language testing requirements

Policy
Statement

Sections 16(a) and (b) of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003 require the Medical Council to ensure that any person given registration to practise medicine in New Zealand is able to communicate in and comprehend English sufficiently to protect the health and safety of the public, and for the purposes of practising within a scope of practice in which they are registered.

Rationale

All NZREX Clinical candidates and registration applicants must have a reasonable ability to comprehend and communicate effectively in English in the medical workplace, as one of the prerequisites for registration.

Requirements

The following scores in the Academic Module of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) are required within one examination:

Test date

Required scores

Before 1 February 2009

An overall band of 7.5 or above, and a band of at least 7.0 in the four individual components of listening, reading, writing and speaking.

On or after 1 February 2009

Minimum requirements:
-   Speaking 7.5
-   Listening 7.5
-   Writing 7.0
-   Reading 7.0

Validity
of IELTS
results

IELTS results are valid within:
-   2 years of an application for registration
-   2 years of NZREX examination date (new candidate)
-   5 years of NZREX examination date (repeat candidate)



Finding
my test
date
You can find the date of an IELTS result near the top of test report form as highlighed on the form below.



TOEFL and
OET

The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and Occupational English Test (OET) are not accepted by the Council as alternatives to IELTS.

IELTS is the only English test approved by the Council.

Policy
Statement

Rationale

Requirements

Validity
of IELTS
results

Finding
my test
date

TOEFL and
OET

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Policy Statement

Rationale

Requirements

Validity of IELTS results

Finding my test date

TOEFL and OET

This site is best viewed with a resolution of 800x600 (or higher) and supports Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0+, Netscape 7.0+ and Firefox 1.0+. We also recommend that you enable pop-ups for this site in your browser's settings.

Some of the content on www.mcnz.org.nz is presented in the Adobe Acrobat portable document format (PDF). You will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader version 4.0 or later to read these documents. You can download and install the latest version of the reader here.

Policy
Statement

Validity
of IELTS
results

Finding
my test
date

TOEFL and
OET