CPTE practice questions: what they look like

The Written Section of the Canadian Physiotherapy Examination (CPTE) is 100 questions in 2.5 hours: a stem, four options and one correct answer, the first 80 in vignettes of four and the last 20 standing alone. CAPR's Candidate Guide describes that format closely, and it is the only honest source for what a CPTE question looks like, because the questions themselves are confidential. This guide sets out the format in the Candidate Guide's words, gives four original questions in that shape with the answer, the reasoning and the document behind each, explains how the Written Section is scored, lists CAPR's own practice tools, and says where the course's 2,475 questions are. None of them is printed here: practice is in the app, and the Communication domain is free with a free account.

No question on this site is a real exam question, and none could honestly be: CAPR reminds candidates that CPTE content "is confidential and proprietary," and its Rules of Conduct "prohibit the memorization, recording, reproduction, disclosure, publication, transmission, solicitation, or sharing of any examination content, in whole or in part, before, during, or after the examination." The penalties in CAPR's integrity statement run from the loss of the attempt to a notice of the misconduct to every Canadian physiotherapy regulator. A site that offers recalled CPTE questions is offering you that risk.

One difference between any text and the real thing: between 20 and 25% of the Written Section's questions are enhanced with images, video or audio. The course's questions are text only and state each finding in words. CAPR's tutorial, described below, lets you try the media questions on the exam platform itself.

How the Written Section asks a question

The Candidate Guide sets out the format. "Each question has a stem and four response options. Of the response options, one is the correct answer and three are incorrect (or less correct) answers or distractors." The first 80 questions come with a vignette, "a short paragraph (usually two to four sentences) that provides an overview of the case," and "All vignettes on the CPTE are associated with four questions." Within a vignette, "information and challenges are introduced progressively, allowing the scenario to evolve," so the second question may tell you something the first did not, and you are expected to use it. The last 20 are stand-alone questions, which "test a specific concept or skill without requiring additional context beyond what is provided in the question."

The guide describes the task as a whole: to "distinguish between correct and plausible-but-incorrect options." In a well-written question more than one option sounds reasonable. The explanation under each question below says why the key ranks first and why each of the others falls short.

What a question is made of

Three things decide a Written Section question: the document behind it, the qualifier in the stem, and the distractors around the key.

The document. The professional questions rest on CAPR's own documents, the Model Standards of Practice and the Code of Ethical Conduct and Core Professional Values above all; the clinical questions rest on the guidelines and reviews a physiotherapist would read. The Blueprint's Companion Guide names the milestones each domain tests, so a question is never about opinion: it is about what a standard or a guideline says to do.

The qualifier. FIRST asks for the next step, not the final outcome, and the standards often put a step before the obvious one: a discussion before consent, an assessment before assigning care. BEST and MOST ask you to rank options that are all partly right. Read the qualifier before the options.

The distractors. The wrong options are reasonable-sounding shortcuts and near misses: consent assumed from an earlier visit, a test used for a purpose it was not designed for, a referral at the right place but the wrong urgency. The explanation under each question below names the shortcut.

The weights decide where to practice. Assessment and Diagnosis and Care Planning are 30% of the Written Section each, about 30 of its 100 questions apiece; Client Safety and Client-Centred Care is 13%; Collaboration 10%; Professional Responsibilities 7%; Communication and Practice Management 5% each. The CPTE blueprint explained sets out the domains and their milestones.

Four questions in the Written Section's shape

Each of these is original, written for this guide from documents you can read yourself, and each ends with the reasoning, as the course's questions do. They are stand-alone questions from Assessment and Diagnosis, Client Safety and Client-Centred Care, and Professional Responsibilities.

How to read your score

Count your correct answers, but do not turn the count into a forecast. On the exam, the Written Section "is scored out of 100 points and counts for 40% of the overall score," one point a question, with "no deductions for incorrect responses." The Oral Section, ten cases answered aloud, counts for the other 60%. There is "one overall pass/fail outcome," set by a criterion-referenced method for each section and combined across the two, and CAPR publishes no number for it. A handful of written questions cannot tell you whether you would pass.

What a practice set can show is a pattern. Look at which domains your wrong answers come from. Assessment and Diagnosis and Care Planning are 30% of the Written Section each, about 30 of its 100 questions apiece; Communication and Practice Management are 5% each, about five. And look at why you missed each one: a fact you did not know, a qualifier you skipped, a detail you assumed that was not in the case. The last two are habits, and habits are cheaper to fix than gaps in knowledge.

CAPR's own practice tools

CAPR's Practice Tools page lists its own resources, and they are worth using alongside any others:

• The CPTE Tutorial, on CAPR's demo exam platform, opens with the login CAPR publishes on that page. It gives "an overview of the structure and content of the Oral Section and the Written Section" and of the platform's tools, and the Oral Section tutorial includes an example case. The Written Section tutorial gives "two hours and 30 minutes of access once you log in," and "There is no limit to the number of times that you can access either tutorial." It is also where you can try the media questions.
• The Written Component Practice Exam (CA$120) is a 200-question exam built from "retired" items of the old Physiotherapy Competency Examination (PCE), mapped to its 2018 blueprint, with four hours to finish. Its score report breaks your result down by domain and area of practice, but "the score report will NOT include the WC – Practice Exam questions or the answer key." CAPR adds that, on that exam, "a Total % Score of less than 65% may indicate that further preparation is required."
• The 50 PCE practice questions (a PDF on CAPR's site, 2023) come with an answer key. CAPR describes them as "provided solely as a resource for candidates who are preparing for the Written Component," a set that "is not balanced to the PCE Blueprint 2018."
• The Written Component Learning Module, in the Candidate Guide's words, "provides detailed explanations for correct and incorrect answers."

All of these were made for the PCE, the exam the CPTE replaced in 2026. The Candidate Guide still recommends the practice exam, because "the same exam platform and a similar multiple-choice question format are used in the Written Section." Use CAPR's tools for the platform and the style; use questions written against the 2025 blueprint for the content. Our guide to CPTE mock exams and CAPR's practice exam explains how to read the practice exam's score report against the CPTE's domains.

Where the course's questions come from

The course holds 2,475 questions across the seven Domains of Practice and 70 lessons, written from documents you can read yourself. The professional questions rest on CAPR's own: the CPTE Blueprint 2025 and its Companion Guide, the Model Standards of Practice and the Code of Ethical Conduct, with the national entry-to-practice curriculum guidelines. The clinical questions rest on open-access guidelines and reviews, among them the knee and ankle guidelines of the Orthopaedic Section of the APTA, Heart & Stroke's acute stroke recommendations, the Canadian Thoracic Society's statement on fibrotic interstitial lung disease, the American College of Rheumatology's osteoarthritis guideline and Parachute's concussion guideline. CAPR's own reference list is mostly textbooks; the explanations cite documents that are free to read, so you can check any answer.

None of them is printed on this site. Questions are read and answered in the app, where your progress is kept and the timed mock is drawn from the same bank; the four above are the only ones in this guide, and they are not in the course. The Communication domain is open in full with a free account, its four lessons with their questions and flashcards, so the format can be tried before anything is paid.

QualExam is independent. CAPR says plainly that it "does not approve, endorse, and recommend any resource that we do not create ourselves," and that applies to us as much as to anyone.

What to do next

• Get a study plan. A free account starts with a short diagnostic and builds your study order from the exam's weights and from what you already know.
• Read a domain in full. With a free account, the four Communication lessons open in full, with their questions and flashcards.
• Practise at length. Full access opens all 70 lessons and their 2,475 questions, a timed 100-question, 150-minute mock of the Written Section, and practice cases for the Oral Section, the first of which is free; how practice works describes the bank.
• Try CAPR's tutorial. The demo platform shows the media questions and the tools of the real exam, as many times as you like.