What should you read for the Canadian Physiotherapy Examination (CPTE)? CAPR answers part of the question itself. Its Key Reference List, in CAPR's words, "outlines the texts and resources (textbooks, standards, guidelines) that CAPR uses in the development of the exam." The current list, updated in April 2025, holds 24 textbooks, an online database and a set of documents you can read without buying anything. This guide sets the list out the way a candidate needs it: what to read first, which textbooks cover which part of the exam, how to use them without buying two dozen books, and why an older list you may find online is the wrong one.
The short answer
- Start with the documents that define the exam: the Candidate Guide, the CPTE Blueprint 2025 and its Companion Guide. All three are on CAPR's website.
- Then read the documents behind the professional domains, which carry 60% of the exam: CAPR's Code of Ethical Conduct and its Model Standards of Practice first, then the national competency profiles, the curriculum guidelines and your province's standards.
- Use the textbooks for depth where you are weak. CAPR's list has 21 for the clinical domains, by area of practice, and 3 more for the professional ones.
- Use the April 2025 list. CAPR's January 2025 list was for the old exam, the PCE: it names 13 resources the CPTE list does not, and older editions of 9 books.
- The list is not an endorsement of anyone's course. CAPR "does not approve, endorse, and recommend any resource that we do not create ourselves."
What the Key Reference List is
The list sits on CAPR's General Overview page, under the heading "CAPR Key Reference List" and the note "Updated April 2025." It follows the CPTE Blueprint's Domains of Practice in two blocks:
- Assessment and Diagnosis, and Care Planning: textbooks grouped by area, in musculoskeletal, neurological, cardiovascular-respiratory, general, paediatrics and geriatrics, plus an online database of outcome measures.
- Client Safety and Client-centred Care, Professional Responsibilities, Collaboration, Communication and Practice Management: CAPR's own Code and Model Standards, three textbooks, and the national profile for physiotherapist assistants.
Under "Other resources," it adds the national entry-to-practice curriculum guidelines, the Canadian Physiotherapy Association's paper on scope of practice and the Competency Profile for Physiotherapists in Canada, and it links the standards of practice of eight provinces: British Columbia with Yukon, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Start with what costs nothing
Before any textbook, read the documents that tell you what the exam is. The Blueprint says candidates "are expected to use the CPTE Blueprint 2025 as a tool to guide their exam preparation, as it provides them with a detailed understanding of the content assessed in the CPTE." Every document below can be read online at no cost:
| Document | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| CPTE Candidate Guide (November 2025) | The format, the timing, the scoring, the tips, and an example oral case. |
| CPTE Blueprint 2025 and its Companion Guide v1.1 (September 2026) | The domains and their weights, the milestones, and 208 named conditions at two levels of depth. |
| CAPR Code of Ethical Conduct and Core Professional Values (2023) and Model Standards of Practice (2024) | For Professional Responsibilities, the Companion Guide says "Content will be based on the Model Standards of Practice and the Code of Ethical Conduct and Core Professional Values." |
| Competency Profile for Physiotherapists in Canada (NPAG, 2017) | The Blueprint's milestones were chosen from "the entry-to-practice milestones in the Competency Profile for Physiotherapists in Canada (2017)." |
| National Physiotherapy Entry-to-Practice Curriculum Guidelines (CCPUP, 2024) | The Companion Guide's conditions are "based on the 'Common Conditions in Physiotherapy Practice'" in these guidelines. |
| Essential Competency Profile for Physiotherapist Assistants in Canada (NPAG, 2012) | What an assistant can be assigned, for the questions on supervising and assigning care. |
| Your province's standards of practice | Linked from CAPR's list, for the eight provinces it names. |
Two more are on the list and online: the Rehabilitation Measures Database, run by the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, for outcome measures, and the Canadian Physiotherapy Association's paper, "Physiotherapy Scope of Practice: Optimizing Care for People in Canada". And CAPR's External Resources page lists learning modules from the College of Physiotherapists of Ontario and the College of Health and Care Professionals of BC, one or more for each professional domain; our CPTE study plan sets them out by domain.
This order matters because of the weights. On the whole exam, Assessment and Diagnosis and Care Planning are 20% each, and the five professional domains are 60% between them, most of it in the Oral Section. Most of the reading list is textbooks for the first two domains; most of the exam is not.
The 24 textbooks, by area
These are the textbooks on CAPR's April 2025 list for Assessment and Diagnosis and Care Planning, as CAPR prints them, with the edition and year:
| Area | Textbook (author, edition, year) |
|---|---|
| Musculoskeletal | "Brukner & Khan's Clinical Sports Medicine: Foundations of Clinical Practice" (Brukner et al., 6th ed., 2018); "Dutton's Orthopedic Examination, Evaluation and Intervention" (Dutton, 6th ed., 2023); "Therapeutic Exercise: Foundations and Techniques" (Kisner, Borstad and Colby, 8th ed., 2023); "Orthopedic Physical Assessment" (Magee and Manske, 7th ed., 2021); "Pathology and Intervention in Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation" (Magee et al., 2nd ed., 2016) |
| Neurological | "Umphred's Neurological Rehabilitation" (Lazaro, Reina-Guerra and Quiben, 7th ed., 2020); "Neurologic Rehabilitation: Neuroscience and Neuroplasticity in Physical Therapy Practice" (Nichols-Larsen et al., 2nd ed., 2024) |
| Cardiovascular-respiratory | "Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Physical Therapy: Evidence to Practice" (Frownfelter and Dean, 6th ed., 2023); "Essentials of Cardiopulmonary Physical Therapy" (Hillegass, 5th ed., 2022); "Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Physical Therapy: An Evidence-Based Approach" (DeTurk and Cahalin, 3rd ed., 2018) |
| General | "Michlovitz's Modalities for Therapeutic Intervention" (Bellew, Michlovitz and Nolan, 7th ed., 2022); "Primary Care for the Physical Therapist: Examination and Triage" (Boissonnault and Vanwye, 3rd ed., 2021); "O'Sullivan & Schmitz's Physical Rehabilitation" (Fulk and Chui, 8th ed., 2024); "Goodman and Fuller's Pathology: Implications for the Physical Therapist" (Goodman and Fuller, 5th ed., 2021); "Acute Care Handbook for Physical Therapists" (Paz et al., 5th ed., 2020); "The Color Atlas of Physical Therapy" (Shamus, 1st ed., 2015) |
| Paediatrics | "Guide to Pediatric Physical Therapy: A Clinical Approach" (Bloyer et al., 1st ed., 2025); "Campbell's Physical Therapy for Children" (Palisano, Orlin and Schreiber, 6th ed., 2024); "Tecklin's Pediatric Physical Therapy" (Spearing, Pelletier and Drnach, 6th ed., 2022) |
| Geriatrics | "Guccione's Geriatric Physical Therapy" (Avers and Wong, 4th ed., 2020); "Geriatric Physical Therapy: A Case Study Approach" (Staples et al., 2nd ed., 2021) |
For the five professional domains, the list adds three textbooks: "Dutton's Introduction to Physical Therapy and Patient Skills" (Dutton, 2nd ed., 2021), "Pierson and Fairchild's Principles & Techniques of Patient Care" (Fairchild, O'Shea and Washington, 7th ed., 2018), and "Health Professional and Patient Interaction" (Haddad, Doherty and Purtilo, 10th ed., 2019).
That is 21 textbooks for the clinical domains and 3 for the professional ones. The list names the editions, so if you buy or borrow, check that you have the one CAPR lists.
How to use the list without buying 24 books
You do not need all 24, and the list does not ask you to read them. It names what CAPR draws on, not a course of study. Some ways to use it well:
- Let your baseline choose. Take a timed set of questions and an oral case in your first week, then open a textbook only for an area where you missed points.
- One book per area is enough to start. For musculoskeletal assessment, for instance, one of the assessment texts, not all five musculoskeletal books.
- Borrow before you buy. A university or hospital library may hold several of them.
- Keep the free documents at the centre. The Blueprint and Companion Guide decide what is examined, the Companion Guide bases Professional Responsibilities on the Code and the Model Standards, and the textbooks add depth. Our guide to CAPR's Model Standards of Practice shows how a standard becomes a question.
- Use current evidence for clinical facts. Textbook editions run years apart, and CAPR updates its list. Open-access clinical practice guidelines, such as the Canadian Thoracic Society's or Heart & Stroke's, are free and dated.
The QualExam lessons work this way. Each one is written against CAPR's documents and open-access clinical guidelines, cites them, and lets you check every point, instead of sending you to a textbook you would have to buy.
The old list still circulates
CAPR's PDF titled "Physiotherapy Competency Examination Key Reference List," dated January 2025, was the list for the old exam, and copies of it and of earlier lists are easy to find online. It is organized by the PCE's blueprint, not the CPTE's, and it differs from the April 2025 list in three ways:
- 13 resources on it are not on the CPTE list: "ACSM's Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription", "Therapeutic Electrophysical Agents" (Bélanger), "Therapeutic Exercise: Moving Toward Function" (Brody and Hall), "Physical Agents in Rehabilitation" (Cameron), "Essentials of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation" (Frontera et al.), "Grieve's Modern Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy", "ACSM's Exercise Management for Persons with Chronic Diseases and Disabilities", "ACSM's Clinical Exercise Physiology", "Neuroanatomy through Clinical Cases" (Blumenfeld), "Neurological Rehabilitation: Optimizing Motor Performance" (Carr and Shepherd), "Motor Control: Translating Research into Clinical Practice" (Shumway-Cook and Woollacott), "Cardiopulmonary Physical Therapy: Management and Case Studies" (Reid, Chung and Hill), and the "Merck Manual Professional Version".
- 5 books on the CPTE list are new: Nichols-Larsen et al., DeTurk and Cahalin, Shamus, Bloyer et al., and Staples et al.
- 9 books appear in a later edition on the CPTE list: Brukner & Khan's, Dutton's orthopedic text, Kisner, Michlovitz's, Hillegass, O'Sullivan & Schmitz's, Campbell's, Pierson and Fairchild's, and Haddad.
If a course or a forum post hands you a reading list, check it against the General Overview page before you spend anything.
What the list is not
It is not a syllabus. The Blueprint and its Companion Guide define what is examined, and the Companion Guide warns that its own list of conditions is "NOT exhaustive." The reference list tells you which books CAPR draws on for that content.
And it is not an endorsement of any course or product that claims to be built on it. CAPR's statement of September 8, 2026 warns of sites and courses with "misleading or incomplete information," some "claiming insider information they do not possess," and says plainly that it "does not approve, endorse, and recommend any resource that we do not create ourselves." That includes us. QualExam is independent, and our questions and lessons are our own.
Where to go next
- Plan the reading: the CPTE study plan puts it into 16 weeks, by the exam's weights.
- Test what you have read: the course's questions come with answers and the documents behind them; CPTE practice questions shows the format.
- Read lessons that cite their sources: a free account opens the Communication domain in full and builds your study order from a short diagnostic.
By QualExam editorial. Written against the certifying body’s published documents, pinned by hash so a revised edition shows up as a change.