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

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.