The 52-year-old has been a psychiatric nurse in Christchurch for the past 33 years, and today she will graduate from the University of Otago (Christchurch) with a PhD in health sciences, effectively allowing her to call herself Dr Wilson from now on.
Despite the degree, Ms Wilson will continue to be a psychiatric nurse, and said she would only use the title doctor outside work hours.
"I won’t use it while I’m working as a nurse. My email signature will just say Lynere Wilson RN [registered nurse], PhD."
Ms Wilson said her PhD explored bipolar disorder and treatment through self-management techniques.
"The PhD was an opportunity to think a little differently, to think outside the square of what is standard practice, and reconsider things from a different perspective.
"The idea is to take the best of what medicine has to offer, but also for medicine to have a bit more flexibility in terms of allowing people to have other ideas about how they live with their condition, in a way that works for them."
Ms Wilson said it was only by chance that she ended up in a career as a psychiatric nurse.
"I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left high school. I wanted to do something a bit different, that wasn’t a standard female job.
"I have an aunt in Dunedin, who was a psychiatric nurse at Cherry Farm, and I thought it sounded a bit different.
"I trained as a psychiatric nurse at Sunnyside when I left high school, and I’ve stayed in the profession ever since.’’She loves the job because it is rewarding, and she gets to see people at their best and their worst.
"I get a lot of satisfaction from being involved, however briefly, in someone’s life and hopefully doing something with them that’s useful — to find a way for people to get wellbeing — whatever that may mean for them."
Ms Wilson joked her decision to do a PhD was "a moment of madness", but in reality it was a decision that was made over a long period of time.
"Since my early 20s, I’ve always done postgraduate studies as well as working as a nurse, and it’s just been a very gradual process of coming to believe in my own abilities.
"One of the reasons I went nursing was because I never thought I was clever enough to go to university.
"But I have now worked out that that was a load of bollocks."