Effects of Pain Neuroscience Education on Pain Attitudes and Beliefs in Physiotherapy Assistant Students

Akdeniz University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Musculoskeletal Pain

Treatments: Other: Traditional pain education; Other: PNE-based education

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT07005778

03.10.2024, TBAEK-683

Details and patient eligibility

About

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.

Full 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.

Enrollment: 41 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 65 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

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.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

---

41 participants in 2 patient groups

Traditional Pain Education

Active Comparator group

Description:

Participants in the control group received a 70-minute lecture based on the biomedical model of pain.

Treatment:

Other: Traditional pain education

PNE based education

Experimental group

Description:

Students in the intervention group received a 70-minute lecture grounded in the biopsychosocial model of pain.

Treatment:

Other: PNE-based education