First Aid Retention of Knowledge Survey

Some 100,000 new first-aiders are trained every year and the regulations require that they should take refresher training at intervals of three years.

This report describes a survey into the retention of knowldege of first-aiders and discusses the results, which suggests that first-aiders retain only a percentage of what is learned on first-aid courses.

The results also indicate that few first-aiders update and refresh their memories by looking at the first-aid manual between refresher courses, and that the three-year interval is considered to be too long.

At the end of the report are appendices including a questionnaire.