London is getting a paramedic bike unit, but it's not ready yet

Some say there's no glory in being a paramedic. 

That's because by the time the news cameras get to the scene, the ambulance is already long gone, speeding toward the hospital with a patient in the back, while the police and fire crews stay behind to talk to the media. 

It means paramedics often get left out of the story and people don't always understand what they really do. 

That all changes when you're on a bike, according to Guelph Wellington Paramedic Service Deputy Chief Leanne Swantko.

"We have just a huge opportunity for public relations. We're really approachable on the bikes," she said, noting people are more likely to ask questions to paramedics who aren't in an ambulance. 

Paramedics don't learn to pedal fast

"It's amazing the amount of questions we get. Anything from a medical condition to the procedures in the hospitals, to dispelling some of the myths about what paramedics can and can't do in Ontario," she said. 

It's that ease of approach and opportunity for public education that convinced Swantko to adopt bikes in Guelph in the first place.

Paramedics needed a way to cut through the thick crowds of summer festivals to help people in distress or deliver life-saving drugs at a well-attended concert. 

It's why paramedics don't learn to pedal fast. 

"Through our training we learned really slow pedalling," Swantko said. "We learned how to manoeuvre the bike through slow crowds when you're going at a really slow speed, that's the big point of the training." 

For the last year since they've had them, Guelph paramedics have also been able to help people they might not have been able to help before. 

"We're coming across them on the bikes ... and are able to engage them," she said, noting a bike can go on back trails through the city that an ambulance can't.

"I know myself when I've been doing bike patrol, somebody has mentioned 'you know there's a syringe out there and would we be able to take care of it' — of course we would." 

With London's simmering drug crisis, it's easy to see how that would come in handy.

Paramedics on bikes would gain unprecedented mobility, able to serve the city's homeless population who seem to be increasingly living in camps clustered around urban forests.

The same is true for medics in a city that's becoming increasingly dense, as new towers surmount the downtown skyline and city planners move to a more pedestrian-friendly streetscape in Dundas Place. 

The trouble is that Middlesex-London EMS isn't talking about it — at least not yet. 

Superintendent of Education Jay Loosely said the unit had just completed its training with London Police and that he would be ready to discuss it publicly in two weeks. 

While the service isn't talking, it was tweeting about it. Putting a few pictures from a recent training session with London Police online. 

So what advice does the Guelph have for London, about to embark down the same bike path as Guelph did a year ago? 

"Enjoy every minute of it," Swantko said. "I was riding out on a paramedic bike fully in uniform talking with people. On the first day that happened, I just had to stop and go, 'take this in because it's really, really cool and it's really exciting.'"

Ready or not, here they come. The new bike mounted paramedics might soon show up at a summer festival in London near you.