Clinical trial NCT07005778: Effects of Pain Neuroscience Education on Pain Attitudes and Beliefs in Physiotherapy Assistant Students
Official title: Effects of Traditional Pain Education and Pain Neuroscience Education on Pain Attitudes and Beliefs in Physiotherapy Assistant Students
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Musculoskeletal Pain
Lead sponsor: Akdeniz University
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Pamukkale University
First posted: 2025-06-05
Enrollment: 41
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Maximum age (years): 65
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: OTHER

Brief summary: The goal of this educational trial is to learn whether Pain Neuroscience Education (PNE) improves pain-related attitudes and beliefs in physiotherapy assistant (PTA) students in Turkey compared to traditional pain education. The main questions this study aims to answer are:

Does a single-session PNE-based education improve students' beliefs about the relationship between pain and disability? Does it reduce reliance on biomedical (organic) pain beliefs compared to traditional pain education? In this study, researchers will compare PNE-based education to traditional pain education, both delivered through 70-minute lectures.

Participants were randomly assigned to either the PNE group or the traditional education group, attended a one time 70-minute classroom lecture, completed questionnaires at three time points: before the session, immediately after, and 3 months later.

The main tools used will be the Health Care Providers' Pain Attitudes and Impairment Relationship Scale (HC-PAIRS) and the Pain Beliefs Questionnaire (PBQ), which includes organic and psychological subscales.

This study aims to support the integration of contemporary pain neuroscience content into physiotherapy assistant curricula to enhance biopsychosocial understanding at an early stage of professional education.

Detailed description: In Turkey, research on the impact of pain neuroscience education (PNE) on the knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes of undergraduate physiotherapy students remains scarce. Moreover, there appears to be no study that directly contrasts traditional pain education with a PNE-based approach that conceptualizes pain as an outcome-driven process, enriched with metaphors and storytelling. Existing literature suggests that physiotherapy assistant programs often provide limited exposure to neuroscience content, which may contribute to the lack of significant improvements in students' understanding and attitudes toward pain following PNE.

Against this background, the current study was developed to explore how a metaphor-supported, case-based PNE intervention influences the pain-related knowledge and beliefs of physiotherapy assistant students. To the best of our knowledge, no prior study in Turkey has systematically evaluated the effects of PNE within this specific student group. Therefore, a randomized controlled trial was designed to compare the outcomes of traditional structural pain education and a neuroscience-based educational program on pain-related beliefs and attitudes among physiotherapy assistant students.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Students were eligible to participate if they were undergraduate physiotherapy assistant students enrolled at the Vocational School of Health Services.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Individuals were excluded if they had previously received in-depth teaching on pain neurophysiology or traditional pain education.

Primary outcomes:
measure: The Health Care Pain Attitudes and Impairment Relationship Scale
timeFrame: Participants completed the HC-PAIRS at baseline, Day 1 and 3 months.
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Pain Beliefs Questionnaire
timeFrame: Participants completed the Pain Beliefs Questionnaire at baseline, Day 1 and 3 months
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Antalya
country: Turkey
facility: Akdeniz University
state: Konyaaltı
Study officials:
affiliation: Akdeniz University
name: Hatice Gül
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Mankelow J, Ryan C, Taylor P, Martin D. The effect of pain neurophysiology education on healthcare students' knowledge, attitudes and behaviours towards pain: A mixed-methods randomised controlled trial. Musculoskelet Sci Pract. 2020 Dec;50:102249. doi: 10.1016/j.msksp.2020.102249. Epub 2020 Aug 28.
citation: Cox T, Louw A, Puentedura EJ. An abbreviated therapeutic neuroscience education session improves pain knowledge in first-year physical therapy students but does not change attitudes or beliefs. J Man Manip Ther. 2017 Feb;25(1):11-21. doi: 10.1080/10669817.2015.1122308. Epub 2016 Feb 10.
citation: Colleary G, O'Sullivan K, Griffin D, Ryan CG, Martin DJ. Effect of pain neurophysiology education on physiotherapy students' understanding of chronic pain, clinical recommendations and attitudes towards people with chronic pain: a randomised controlled trial. Physiotherapy. 2017 Dec;103(4):423-429. doi: 10.1016/j.physio.2017.01.006. Epub 2017 Mar 22.