Rate My Professor Jo Borren

Dr Jo Borren is a Lecturer in the Department of Nursing (Christchurch) at the University of Otago, within the Division of Health Sciences. Her professional career began in clinical nursing, with experience in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and General Practice. In these roles, she now supports nursing students undertaking clinical placements in diverse settings, ranging from aged care and primary practice to acute medical and surgical areas. Borren has been involved in nursing tertiary education since 2017, joining the Centre for Postgraduate Nursing Studies at the University of Otago in March 2021. Her teaching responsibilities include postgraduate papers such as NURS503: Complex Health States, NURS471: Foundations of Infection Prevention and Control, and NURS472: Infection Prevention and Control in Practice.

Borren's research specializations focus on competence assessment, interprofessional education, and work-integrated learning. In 2024, she was awarded a PhD in Health Sciences from the University of Canterbury for her doctoral thesis, 'Competence assessment practice in the Bachelor of Nursing programmes in Aotearoa New Zealand.' Her key publications include Borren and Harding (2020), 'Evolution of the Canterbury dedicated education unit model,' published in Nurse Education in Practice; and Borren, Sutherland, and Maidment (2023), 'A speed-networking model for facilitating interprofessional education and work-integrated learning,' in the International Journal of Work-Integrated Learning. Recent contributions encompass conference presentations with Sarah Berger on novel postgraduate curricula for infection prevention and control (ACIPC International Conference, November 2024; IPCNC Conference, August 2024), a webinar presentation on competence assessment for Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora Southern (July 2025), and Stewart, Berger, and Borren (2025) on vascular access teams at the Australian Vascular Access Society Scientific Meeting. She has served as advisor or supervisor for master's research projects, including theses on factors influencing secondary school students' choice of nursing and gender biases in cardiovascular health outcomes for women. Borren contributes to pedagogical enhancement as a key driver of the Kōkiri Ki Tua network, promoting communities of practice for learning and teaching, and as a Kaikōkiri for the Division of Health Sciences Wellington campus on the Committee for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching.