Competence retention in safety-critical professions: A systematic literature review

Optimal competence is vital in safety-critical professions. To optimize (refresher) training, insight into the process of competence decay and influencing factors on competence decay is crucial. Although retention of knowledge and simple skills has been studied for many years, literature on retention of complex skills remains limited. This literature review focuses on the factors influencing retention that have been studied empirically since 2010 in the context of safety-critical professions. Furthermore, the nature of competence retention curves over time was studied.