Now the acting Discharge Planner for the Big Rivers Region at the Katherine Hospital, Ms Wilson started as an assistant nurse around two decades ago, but soon realised she wanted more.

So, she went back to university and put herself through her degree while working full time and raising her three boys as a single mum.

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"It was so hard because I also had to do clinical placements...and I had nobody to look up to my kids," she said.

"Some of the placements, when it gets to eight weeks and you're not getting an income and you've got three kids and rent to pay and bills, all that it is so hard.

"But, you're working so hard for the end prize and you know it's worth it."

She said nursing both of her parents in their last days and witnessing the treatment they were subjected to was also a major turning point for her.

"[My mother] got a blood clot that travelled from her heart and lodged in her small bowel. So she was supposed to survive, but she was treated very awfully [in hospital]," Ms Wilson said.

"When my mum passed away...that was it. I was never going to let another person, especially someone I loved, die with no dignity and respect and that's why I became a nurse."

Her mother's death also led to Ms Wilson learning that she was Aboriginal, which she said was a missing puzzle piece from her life.

"My mum's family turned up to tell her just in case she died 'by the way, your father was an Aboriginal man from the Hunter River,'" Ms Wilson said.

"But she never got to know him so none of us got to...mum died before she could meet that side and when she died I was like 'that is it.'

"It answered a lifetime of questions for me."

Now, Ms Wilson is a beloved staff member at the Katherine hospital and a fierce advocate for equal access to health care for all her patients, whether they are Indigenous or non-Indigenous.

She said she has found a sense of belonging in Katherine that she had never had before.

"I'm nursing, they're not my mob, my mob's down on the Hunter River, but this is my family," she said.

"I don't think I would ever leave the Northern Territory or stop doing what I'm doing up here because it took me a lot of years to find home."

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