Chronic pain is persistent or recurrent pain that persists for more than three months and is divided into chronic primary and secondary pain syndromes (Treede et al., 2019). Chronic primary pain syndromes are pain related to fibromyalgia, migraine, low back pain, while chronic secondary pain syndromes are pain related to cancer or surgery (Treede et al., 2019). In the United States, the prevalence of chronic pain among adults was 20.5%, with the highest prevalence of hip, knee and foot pain, followed by back pain (Yong, Mullins and Bhattacharyya, 2022). Chronic pain leads individuals to seek help from health professionals.

Nurses play a key role in chronic pain management. In chronic pain management, nurses have the responsibilities of assessing pain by taking into account the bio-psychosocial and cultural factors affecting the individual, diagnosing pain with scales, treatment options and planning, implementing and evaluating individual-centered pain control interventions in collaboration with different disciplines (National Core Education Program in Nursing [HUÇEP], 2022; Hernández-Sánchez et al., 2022; United States Department of Health and Social Services [HHS], 2019; Twycross et al., 2018). In a systematic review study that included 18 studies with 7942 nurses measuring nurses' knowledge and attitudes towards pain, it was found that 52.9% of the nurses scored 52.9% on a scale where a score of 80% and above was considered successful and they were inadequate (Ortiz et al., 2022). The reasons for this inadequacy include minimal chronic pain management content in the undergraduate curriculum, poor integration of chronic pain management into the curriculum despite the availability of updated curricula (HUÇEP, 2022, Twycross et al., 2018), fewer class hours, the use of traditional teaching methods to teach pain and the inability to translate theory into practice (Cousins et al., 2022, Hernández-Sánchez et al., 2022, Thompson et al., 2018). In Campbell's (2020) study investigating the perspectives of 17 faculty members working in 15 nursing programs on pain management teaching, it was found that only basic theoretical information about pain was given to nursing students. In a systematic review study involving 1454 participants and analyzing the results of six studies, it was revealed that nursing students' pain knowledge levels and attitudes towards pain management have not improved in the last 20 years (Cousins et al., 2022).

To manage chronic pain effectively, it is necessary to provide training to improve the knowledge and attitudes of new-generation nursing students (Cousins et al., 2022, Thompson et al., 2018). In the teaching of chronic pain management, technology-supported training which is clinical case-based, where they can solve problems by seeing them and can be accessed independently from place and time are required that appeal to new generation students rather than traditional education (Allred and Gerardi, 2017, Williams, 2019).

Web-based training has become a type of training that attracts the attention of the new generation of nursing students because it can be carried out remotely and is open to using many audio and visual teaching tools in an integrated manner (Du et al., 2013, Kang and Seomun, 2018). Web-based training in nursing students has been reported to facilitate learning, provide practical skills, encourage lifelong systematic learning, provide students with the opportunity for self-evaluation, make learning flexible, provide faster and easier access to quality learning resources and increase students' interest in learning, participation levels and autonomous learning (Regmi and Jones, 2020). This was the reason why web-based training was preferred in the study.

In the literature review, we came across web-based training only for teaching acute pain and pediatric pain management to nursing students and it was reported to be effective (Aydın and Bektaş, 2020, Alvarez et al., 2017, Liu et al., 2020). Although the deficiencies in the attitudes of nursing students towards chronic pain patients and chronic pain management knowledge have been frequently emphasized in the literature (Cousins et al., 2022, Thompson et al., 2018), no web-based training developed for teaching chronic pain management has been found. Our study is original in this respect. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a web-based chronic pain management training program developed for nursing students.

Research questions:

What is the effect of chronic pain management training program on nursing students' knowledge level of chronic pain management?

-What is the effect of chronic pain management training program on nursing students' attitudes towards patients with chronic pain?

-Is there a relationship between nursing students' chronic pain management knowledge levels and their attitudes towards patients with chronic pain?