Clinical practice guides for chronic pain management recommend assessment and treatment centered on a biopsychosocial perspective, which requires adequate training of health professionals. Despite the recognition of the importance of pain study and the international recommendations of pain curricula, training in physiotherapy seems insufficient to prepare professionals for the management of people with chronic pain.

To understand the study profile of pain in physical therapy graduation in Brazil and to assess whether there is a difference in pain knowledge and beliefs between graduation years and regions of Brazil.

Cross-sectional study with a descriptive and quantitative approach in which the sample corresponded to physical therapy undergraduate students from all over Brazil. Data were collected through an online form that addressed questions related to the study of pain during graduation, the pain knowledge of undergraduates (Questionnaire of Neurophysiology of Pain, QND, 0-12) and attitudes and beliefs about pain (Health Care Providers' Pain and Impairment Relationship Scale, HC-PAIRS, 0-90). Data were expressed as percentages and mean ± standard deviation and compared across years and regions using one-way ANOVA.

218 physiotherapy students participated in the study. Only 18.3% of the sample had contact with a specific discipline on pain during graduation, which seems to happen predominantly in the 3rd (28.9%) and 4th (22.6%) years of the course, as well as in the northeast region of Brazil (27.3%). Most students learn about pain diffusely in other disciplines, which happens from the 2nd year onwards (63 to 78%) and predominantly in the southern region (74.5%). The vast majority of students report interest in knowing or deepening the study of pain (95.41%). Students in the 1st year have lower pain knowledge (5.5 ± 2.2) than those in the 2nd (6.8 ± 2.3), 3rd (7.6 ± 2.0), 4th (7. 7 ± 2.0) and 5th (7.3 ± 1.9) years, which corroborates to the level of contact with pain content in the 1st year of the course. Students in the 1st (50.3 ± 9.0) and 2nd (47.1 ± 9.9) years have more dysfunctional beliefs about pain than those in the 4th (43.7 ± 9.7) and 5th (40.8 ± 10.3) years. Regarding the regions of Brazil, the QND and HC-PAIRS scores did not show significant differences.

The study of pain has predominantly been addressed in a diffuse and non-specific way in physiotherapy undergraduate programs in Brazil. Students' pain knowledge is low, especially in the first two years of the undergraduate programs. Students report a high interest in knowing or deepening their knowledge of pain, which reinforces the need to implement the IASP recommendations on the minimum curriculum on pain in physical therapy graduation in Brazil.

The implementation of a pain curriculum based on the IASP guidelines can help to improve the knowledge of pain among undergraduate physical therapy students in Brazil.