The 61-year-old duty operations manager worked his final shift on Tuesday and his last day with NSW Ambulance is Friday.

Inspector Patrick started with NSW Ambulance in September 1978, stationed in his home town of Blacktown.

From there he moved to Batlow, Lithgow and then Dubbo in 2004, where his role took in Gilgandra, Coonamble, Walgett, Lightning Ridge and Collarenebri. 

His first job was to attend to a patient with chest pain just five minutes into his role and his final one a patient who had been hit by a vehicle while riding a horse at Parkes.

In between, there were jobs that stayed with him over the years, including countless road fatalities such as the deaths of a mother and her two young children near the zoo at Dubbo.

Another was a major fire in Lithgow in the 1990s.

"I'd just had lunch with two Rural Fire Service officers before they hit the fires," Inspector Patrick said.

"Within two to three hours they'd perished and I had to pronounce them deceased.

"The next day I went back with the police to recover the bodies. My office at Lithgow looked over the mountain where it happened and I could not sit in my office for two months afterwards."

While there had no doubt been tragic events, no two days were the same and there had also been plenty of highlights, Inspector Patrick said.

And that included helping to deliver sons Corey, now 16, and Sean, now 14, at Lithgow.

"We'd arrived at hospital but not in time for a doctor to attend so both times I had to step in," he said.

"It was a pretty amazing experience," he said.

A bonus of working in the country was getting to know the community, Inspector Patrick said.

"If you walk down the street in your uniform, everyone says G'day or waves to you with a smile," he said.

Naturally there had been plenty of changes in the 38 years Inspector Patrick had spent with NSW Ambulance.

When he first trained, the emphasis was very much on being a first aider and driver to get people to hospital, whereas now paramedics were trained to clinically diagnose and treat patients in an out-of-hospital environment.

"The clinical advancements have been amazing and will only continue to grow rapidly," he said.

"People skills and a sense of humour" were important attributes for paramedics, according to Inspector Patrick.

"You can get people who might blitz their exams yet can't talk to someone," he said.

"You need to be adaptable to speaking to elderly people, children, partygoers or drunks.

"It's also important to be able to open up and discuss with colleagues if something is wrong.

"Some might go for five years and not do a major job and until they face a particular situation, you don't know how they're going to react.

"We wear a uniform and have a role to play but we are human too."

Being "Mr Dad" in his retirement was a new challenge Inspector Patrick welcomed.

"My boys are nearly 15 and 17 - in the past they've had me going away for days and weeks at a time, now it's my turn to watch them grow."

Enjoying taekwondo and his Indian ringneck parrots would also feature in Inspector Patrick's retirement, he said.