Mrs Patel-West, who has worked for North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) for more than a decade, said: "I've been verbally abused, racially abused, punched and had a knife drawn on me.
"On one job a patient said 'you need to go back to your own country, you're not welcome here' before he threw an ashtray at my head. He missed by inches.
"I signed up to this job to help people, not this."
Over the last four-and-a-half years, NWAS logged 1,281 physical assaults, 1,192 incidents of verbal abuse and threats, 711 cases of sexual abuse and 150 cases of racial abuse.
Emergency call handler James Shelley, 33, who works at an NWAS office in Manchester, said he was left "shaking" after he was subjected to an 11-minute tirade of homophobic abuse in a call earlier this year.
"I took a call from a gentleman who's mother had an itch, he told me to send a taxi and when I reminded him that we were not a taxi service he just started hurling homophobic abuse at me," Mr Shelley said.
"It doesn't normally faze me, but it was 8am on a week day. I'd been in an hour and he was so aggressive. I was shaking afterwards."
The caller was later identified as Mahinder Singh, 36, from Trafford. At Manchester Magistrates' Court in July he was handed a £500 fine, 100 hours of unpaid work and a 16 week prison sentence suspended for 18 months.
In his victim impact statement, which was read out in court, Mr Shelley said: "The comments reminded me of slurs and insults I received while I was at school, when I was coming to terms with my sexuality.
"This made me feel personally attacked and I don't think it's acceptable in this day and age."