Clendon, Dr Jill

Jocelyn Peach
Aug 4, 2024
2 min read

Updated: Jan 6

Regional Clinical Director, Primary and Community Care, Service Commissioning Te Waipounamu. Chair of Nurse Executives Aotearoa

Registered Nurse, Bachelor of Arts in Policial Studies, Masters of Philosophy Nursing , PhD Nursing from Massey University.

Jill Clendon initially enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Political Science and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Auckland. At university, she joined the ski club and spent four New Zealand summers working as a ski patroller in Lake Tahoe. Working at a summer camp for girls she identified she enjoyed working with the camp nurse and decided to move back to New Zealand to study nursing. She completed her Diploma of Comprehensive Nursing at Waikato Polytechnic; registering February 1994.

After graduating, she returned to the States, working as a paediatric nurse in Colorado and Alaska before moving back to New Zealand to work in paediatrics at Starship Hospital in Auckland.

While working as a public health nurse in the community she enrolled in a Master of Nursing at Massey University, giving birth to her first child on the last day of collecting data for her thesis. After she finished her thesis, she taught in Massey University’s postgraduate nursing programme for eight years. She had her second child and completed her PhD. She has taught at both undergraduate and post graduate levels with a specific interest in primary health care and child and family health.

From July 2008 to May 2010 Jill worked at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology in the Bachelor of Nursing programme as a Senior Academic - lecturing and curriculum development

From May 2010 she commuted weekly from Nelson to Wellington to work as Nursing Policy Advisor and Researcher for the New Zealand Nurses Organisation. In 2017, Dr Jill Clendon was appointed to the Chief Advisor Office of the Chief Nursing Officer Ministry of Health. She also was Acting Chief Nursing Officer to give advice about all things nursing to the Ministry of Health and Director General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield through the COVID period.

More recently Dr Jill Clendon has worked in the position of Associate Director of Nursing and Operations Manager for Ambulatory Care at Nelson Marlborough District Health Board Te Whatu Ora, a mix of leadership and operational management, responsible for district nursing and public health nursing. In her spare time Jill runs a volunteer after-hours nurse-led clinic in Nelson, is Chairperson of the Victory Community Health Centre Board, a local community-led health initiative.

Since February 2012, she has continued as adjunct professor at Victoria University in the Graduate School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health. She is co-writing her fourth nursing textbook. Jill's research has examined the efficacy of community-based nurse-led clinics, and the historical and contemporary context of community-based well-child care in New Zealand, on nursing workforce issues and models of care, cultural history, primary health care and nursing science.

Jill is a member of the College of Nurses (Aotearoa). She is chair of Nurse Executives Aotearoa.

Jill enjoys mountain biking, orienteering, tramping and skiing with her family.