Intraoperative Pursuit to recognise existing and opportunities for development 

Claire Tarrant – School of Health Sciences 

Shortly after I started at Surrey University I became the module leader for Intraoperative Care – a second-year Level 5 module that revisited many of the topics the students had considered in their first year, both as part of their taught modules and their practice placement, but with a focus on greater complexity and depth within these topics.  

I made Intraoperative Pursuit to offer the students an opportunity to make use of, and consciously recognise, their existing knowledge and explore where opportunities for development lay.  

Using the board, the colours were coordinated to the various topics within the module, with the aim of the game to gain a full set of colours by correctly answering questions from each colour. 

Colour  Category  
Green Patient positioning and skin preparation 
Red  Tissue retraction, handling and exposure 
Purple  Wound management, drains and wound closure 
Blue  Legal, ethical and professional roles  
Yellow  Catherisation 
Orange  Sutures, Suction, Ligation & Haemostasis  
White Your Choice 


During the lunch break, I set the room up so that each table had a board, score card and a question booklet.  Over the next two hours the students played the game, taking it in turn to read the questions and gain their colours.  

(I may have had a small happy cry when each and every one of the 5 tables decided to keep playing on after there was a winner as they were enjoying it and getting a lot out of the questions).  

The question bank was a mixture of multiple choice, pictures and questions, which the students had access to following the session, to dip into as a learning resource.  I have used this game a number of times for this module and also for a post-registration module called Anaesthetic Practitioner.  I swapped out a few of the question categories and we were good to go! 

For more information contact: Claire Tarrant, Senior Teaching Fellow, c.tarrant@surrey.ac.uk