The CPTE blueprint: syllabus and exam pattern

The CPTE Blueprint 2025 is the document that decides what the Canadian Physiotherapy Examination tests and how much of each. CAPR says so directly: "Candidates are expected to use the CPTE Blueprint 2025 as a tool to guide their exam preparation." It is twelve pages long, and its Companion Guide, at version 1.1 since September 2026, spends thirty-three more explaining what each part means. This guide walks through both: the exam's shape, the two dimensions the content is organized under, what each part weighs in each section, and what the weights mean for how you study.

Where the blueprint comes from

The blueprint is the product of CAPR's Evaluation Services Re-envisioned project, launched in 2024 to design a new entry-to-practice assessment model. CAPR developed it with Meazure Learning and its Examinations Program Advisory Committee, a group of subject matter experts, representatives of Canadian physiotherapy programs and regulators, and practising physiotherapists. The committee started from the entry-to-practice milestones in the Competency Profile for Physiotherapists in Canada (2017), chose the subset the exam would assess, and had it validated by a survey of practising physiotherapists across Canada. CAPR's Board approved the blueprint in December 2024, and exam forms are built from it from January 2026.

The Competency Profile matters to you for a practical reason: the CPTE's milestones are taken from it, so its wording is the wording the exam is written against.

The exam's shape

The blueprint's first table sets out the two sections:

In the blueprint's words: "The CPTE is structured with a 40-60 weighting, where 40% of the candidate's total score comes from the WS and 60% from the OS." It gives the reason as well: the weighting reflects the content each format assesses best, and "the critical importance of the more realistic, real-time, and in-depth assessment of applied clinical reasoning that is accomplished through the OS."

The Candidate Guide fills in the rest of the format. Each section is 2.5 hours. The Oral Section comes first: ten cases, each with three questions answered aloud within 15 minutes. The Written Section follows, and its first 80 questions come with a vignette.

Two dimensions

The blueprint organizes the content under two dimensions, and every question sits somewhere in both.

• Domains of Practice are "the broad areas of professional activity and responsibility of a physiotherapist." There are seven, holding 63 entry-to-practice milestones, plus three Core Clinical Reasoning and Decision-Making milestones above them.
• Areas of Practice are "the specific clinical fields and groupings of conditions within which physiotherapists apply their knowledge and skills." There are four, holding 47 condition categories.

A domain says what you are doing: assessing, planning, keeping a client safe, communicating. An area says what the client has: a tendon injury, a stroke, heart failure. A question about choosing tests for a client with a suspected knee ligament tear sits in Assessment and Diagnosis and in Musculoskeletal at the same time.

The seven Domains of Practice

Above them sit the three core milestones: incorporating the best available evidence, the client's context, and your own knowledge and experience into clinical decisions. They have no weight of their own because, as the blueprint puts it, they "will be assessed across the entire exam as they are embedded within many of the other milestones." The Companion Guide calls this evidence-informed practice: integrating the best available evidence, your professional expertise and the client's perspective at every stage of care.

What each domain weighs

The blueprint gives the weights three ways, and reading them together is the most useful thing you can do with it.

The whole-exam column is the blueprint's Table 2, given as ranges. The two section columns come from the domain pages, which show each domain's share within each section; the blueprint marks the section figures as approximate. The views agree: Assessment and Diagnosis is 30% of the Written Section, and 30% of a section worth 40% of the score is 12% of the exam, which is the figure Table 2 gives for that domain's written share.

Three things stand out:

• The Written Section is clinical. Assessment and Diagnosis and Care Planning are 30% each, three-fifths of the section between them. With Client Safety, the three clinical-reasoning domains are 73% of it.
• The Oral Section is professional. Professional Responsibilities is 7% of the Written Section but 24% of the Oral Section, its largest domain. Collaboration, Communication and Practice Management are 12% each. The four professional domains together are 27% of the Written Section and 60% of the Oral Section.
• Across the whole exam, professional practice is nearly half. By the midpoints of Table 2's ranges, the four professional domains are 45% of the exam. A candidate who studies only clinical content is preparing for a little over half of it.

The Oral Section's cases have their own rule, set by the Candidate Guide: every case asks one question from Assessment and Diagnosis or Care Planning, one from Client Safety and Client-Centred Care, and one from Professional Responsibilities, Collaboration, Communication or Practice Management. The blueprint's shares describe content, not question counts, so read the two together: a professional question in every case, and professional content weighing 60% of the section. The CPTE Oral Section guide explains how the cases run.

What the milestones mean

The blueprint lists the milestones; the Companion Guide explains them. CAPR describes its purpose as providing "detailed descriptions that clarify the intent of each content area," and the descriptions are worth reading line by line, because they say what the questions look for.

Two examples from the first domain. On interviewing the client (A.01), the guide says: "Content should go beyond knowledge and skills related to standard history checklists by focusing on individualized questions." On identifying impairments, activity limitations and participation restrictions (A.05), it says the content is "Anchored in the ICF framework," the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. The pattern holds throughout: the guide asks for reasoning about a particular client, not recall of a generic list.

The four Areas of Practice

Musculoskeletal is half the exam, which is no surprise; our guides to physiotherapy special tests and outcome measures cover the assessment side of these areas. The other half is the point: neurological, cardiovascular-respiratory and other conditions are worth as much together, and Other Systems even has a category for healthy populations.

The table carries a footnote that changes how to read it: "Not all items will be tagged to a Condition Category or Area of Practice." Some questions test non-clinical competencies that need no knowledge of a particular condition, so the area weights describe the clinical questions, not every question.

Conditions: Level 1 and Level 2

The Companion Guide goes one level further than the blueprint and names the conditions in each category, based on the "Common Conditions in Physiotherapy Practice" in the National Physiotherapy Entry-to-Practice Curriculum Guidelines 2024. By our count of its tables, it names 208 conditions: 70 musculoskeletal, 54 neurological, 51 cardiovascular-respiratory and 33 in other systems. Two warnings come with the list. It is not complete: "The conditions listed in this document are NOT exhaustive," and other common conditions may appear. And the conditions come in two levels:

• Level 1, 158 of the 208 by our count. Entry-to-practice physiotherapists are expected to have "extensive knowledge and skills to manage these conditions." Questions can assess etiology, pathophysiology, natural history, typical presentation, differential diagnoses, prognosis, physiotherapy management and basic medical or surgical management.
• Level 2, the other 50. Physiotherapists are expected to "be aware of these conditions and understand the condition type/category and general clinical presentation." Questions assess foundational knowledge and basic management principles.

For a Level 1 condition such as tendinopathy, expect to be asked how to diagnose it, how it differs from what it resembles, and how to manage it. For a Level 2 condition in the same category, such as Osgood-Schlatter disease, expect to recognize it and know the principles of its care, not the detail.

Ages and settings

The blueprint's last table is a set of guidelines for spreading the questions across the people and places an entry-level physiotherapist meets:

• Client age groups: 0 to 18 years, 19 to 64 years, and over 65 years.
• Practice settings: community health centre, extended or long-term care facility, home care, hospital or acute care facility, private practice clinic, and rehabilitation centre.

Expect children and older adults as well as working-age clients, and a hospital ward or a client's home as well as a private clinic. A management answer that fits a clinic and ignores a home setting's equipment or an acute ward's precautions will miss what the question is testing.

Reading the blueprint for study

• Weight your hours by section. For the Written Section, put the most time into Assessment and Diagnosis and Care Planning. For the Oral Section, give the professional domains the time their 60% deserves.
• Learn the professional documents. The Companion Guide's resources list CAPR's Code of Ethical Conduct and Core Professional Values, its Model Standards of Practice, the Competency Profile for Physiotherapists in Canada, the National Physiotherapy Entry-to-Practice Curriculum Guidelines, the Canadian Physiotherapy Association's position paper on scope of practice, and the ICF. For complying with regulatory requirements (D.01), the Companion Guide says: "Content will be based on the Model Standards of Practice and the Code of Ethical Conduct and Core Professional Values." Our guide to CAPR's Model Standards of Practice sets out all 20 standards and the milestones that ask about them.
• Use the milestones as a checklist. Read each of the 66 milestones with its Companion Guide description, and ask whether you could answer a question on it about a particular client.
• Give the non-musculoskeletal half its share. Half the clinical content is outside the musculoskeletal system.
• Separate Level 1 from Level 2. Depth on the 158 Level 1 conditions; recognition and principles for the 50 Level 2 ones.

The CPTE exam guide lays out the domains with their weights, and its course follows the blueprint: lessons organized by the seven domains, and practice questions tagged by milestone and condition category. To see the blueprint in questions, read what CPTE practice questions look like; for what to read alongside it, see CPTE books and resources.