Jedward have brought us many amazing things over the past few years: crazy hair, spangley matching suits and hyperactive dancing to name but a few. And now? Now they’ve brought happiness to dozens of injured children.
According to some new research from the National Children’s Hospital in Tallaght, Jedward’s hair is the perfect way of distracting upset children who have sustained an injury. Yes really.
Writing in the Emergency Medicine Journal, doctors at the hospital say that blowing up a ruber glove and drawing a face on it had proved immensely popular with younger patients and managed to distract them from any pain or discomfort they were feeling. The trick is to pop out the fingers in a spikey hairdo and refer to the glove as “Jedward.”
In order to see just how popular the “Jedward” was, doctors created another glove character called “Mohawk” – this was a glove where the four fingers represent the hair and the thumb is the nose.
Who knew Jedward’s spikey hair actually had potent healing powers?
The gloves were then trialled on 149 paediatric patients between the ages of two and eight and the “Jedward” glove was picked on 75 occasions.
“A standard hospital glove, inflated as a balloon with a face drawn on it, is a useful distraction for children with an acute injury,” the doctors concluded.
They also added that the face on the glove should be drawn in “Jedward style.” Good to know.
We wonder if there’s a grown up equivalent of the “Jedward” for adults? We imagine waving a picture of a topless Jake Gyllenhaal would make us forget about any aches or pains super-quick…
