Participants
Participants were recruited from a public nursing home
for older people with low socioeconomic resources
in Spain. Residents were without severe cognitive or
physical impairments (ie, they were able to walk and
transfer independently). The nursing home provides food
and accommodation, social attention (eg, recreational
opportunities or hairdressing in the centre), and basic
primary care monitoring (eg, monitoring of patients’ blood
pressure and medication use). The nursing home has 158
residents. The physiotherapy management usually provided
to residents includes general physical activity classes and
management of specific orthopaedic, neurological or
respiratory problems, but balance training is not routinely
provided. The inclusion criteria for the study were: age
of 65 years or over, residence in a nursing home, fear of
falling, with a score > 23 for the 16 item Falls Efficacy
Scale International questionnaire (Delbaere et al 2010),
legal capacity to give informed consent, and ability tounderstand instructions. The exclusion criteria were:
artificial prosthesis, participation in any physical therapies
other than those routinely provided in the nursing home, any
symptom that a medical examiner deemed as warranting
exclusion, any disease that contraindicated the exercise
program or required special care (eg, coronary artery
disease, thrombosis, moderate or severe bone, lung or renal
diseases), and any disease requiring the daily intake of
psychotropic drugs or affecting the vestibular system, in
order to avoid any influence on balance measures.