The APIE planning station

Written and checked against the NMC’s published sources by The NMCMATE editorial team.Last checked 1 September 2026.

Planning is the station where your assessment either pays off or does not. You are given the patient you have just assessed and asked to write a care plan for them, which means deciding what matters most, writing goals somebody else could measure, and choosing interventions that follow from your own findings rather than from the diagnosis in general. It is largely a written station, and candidates who talk well often find it the hardest of the four.

What a care plan has to do here

• Identify the patient's actual problems, in the words of what you found, rather than restating the medical diagnosis.
• Prioritise them. A plan that treats every problem as equally urgent has not made the decision the station is asking for.
• Set goals somebody else could measure, with a number and a timeframe where the problem has one.
• Choose interventions that follow from your assessment, and that a nurse can actually carry out.
• Say how and when each goal will be reviewed, because a plan with no review point cannot be evaluated later.
• Write it so the next nurse on shift could pick it up and act on it without asking you anything.

Where candidates come unstuck

• Writing goals nobody could measure. "Patient will be comfortable" cannot be evaluated; "pain score of 3 or less by 14:00" can.
• Planning for the diagnosis instead of the patient. The marks are for a plan that answers what you found in the assessment station, not a textbook plan for the condition.
• Listing interventions with no goal attached, so nothing in the plan says what any of it is for.
• Leaving out the review. Evaluation is the fourth station, and a plan that never says when to look again gives you nothing to evaluate against.
• Running out of time because the prioritising was done on paper rather than in your head first.

Common questions

What happens in the APIE planning station?

You write a care plan for the patient you assessed in the previous station: their problems, prioritised, with measurable goals, the interventions that follow from your findings, and when each will be reviewed. It is mostly written rather than spoken.

Do I have to use a particular care planning model?

The NMC does not mandate one on its published OSCE page. What is being marked is whether the plan is prioritised, measurable, deliverable and traceable back to your own assessment, which most recognised models will get you to if you follow one properly.

Is the planning station marked on handwriting or spelling?

What matters is that the plan is legible and unambiguous to the next person reading it, because that is what a care plan is for. Perfect spelling is not the point; a goal nobody else could interpret is.

Can I practise the planning station here?

Yes. The simulator carries all four APIE stages, so you can rehearse planning against the same patient you assessed, and a sitting runs the four in sequence the way the exam does. Simulator attempts come with every access plan, 4 of them with the 99 days plan, which is a full APIE sitting, and in larger packs on their own. Our simulator covers assessment-style stations from the 10: you hold the conversation with a simulated patient by typing, and are marked against criteria we wrote ourselves. The four clinical skills stations are performed on manikins and equipment and are not simulated here. The result is a simulated verdict, not a prediction of how an NMC assessor would mark you.

This page is one part of the exam. Work through the whole thing with the NMC OSCE pages.