Nurse Karen Barlow quietly watches a towering rural dad comfort his young son, who has a broken arm after jumping on a bunk bed with his rambunctious brothers.

As the father and son travelled with the Royal Flying Doctor Service from their remote town for treatment in Dubbo, Ms Barlow was moved by their deep connection.

"The little boy was a foster child and they were trying to adopt him," she tells AAP.

"The dad leaned over... and held that little boy's hand all the way.

"This little kid did not take his eyes off him. It was beautiful."

The senior flight nurse cared for another rural family whose young daughter had suddenly fallen ill and was on life support during a flight to Sydney.

The girl had always been happy and well.

"Her dad said, 'If you offered me a million dollars yesterday to bet I'd be doing this today, I would have knocked it back'," Ms Barlow said.

These are the poignant moments that will stay with Ms Barlow as she retires after 27 years with the aeromedical service.

Raised on the land, she was a founding member of the Dubbo base after starting her career in midwifery, acute care and emergency medicine.

The NSW service's 14 aircraft cover roughly three million kilometres each year, providing about 90,000 instances of care across air retrievals, remote clinics and telehealth.

Nationally, crews had contact with 345,000 patients in 2023/24, with about 33,000 flown for treatment.

A quarter of a century working with rural and remote patients has shown Ms Barlow how small towns come together in difficult times.

"If someone's hurt, or someone's in need, that community wraps them up and does everything they can," she said.

Of course, greeting royalty is a pretty notable career highlight too.

"Twice, darling," she joked.

Ms Barlow met King Charles and Queen Camilla during a 2012 visit to the Longreach base before they ascended the throne.

The medical crew sat in a hot aircraft before meeting the couple, leaving them drenched in sweat as they came face-to-face with royalty.

Camilla assured them she could relate.

"She said, 'I nearly had to call you; the humidity was so bad, I thought I was going to collapse'," Ms Barlow said.

"If she rung, we would have come."

Six years later, Ms Barlow met the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Harry and Meghan, when they visited Dubbo soon after their wedding.

The prince, who worked as a cattle hand on an outback station during an Australian gap year, was curious about how the service worked and how it recruited nurses, Ms Barlow said.

"They were both really nice."

Leaving "the best job in the world" won't be easy.

"You're going to pick up people that are probably having the worst day of their life," she said.

"Your job is to make them feel better, to reassure them – some of these people have never even flown before.

"They trust us to treat them; it's quite humbling."