摘要Objective: To explore the attitudes toward the use of local anesthetic (LA) in arterial blood gas sampling and the awareness and adherence to British Thoracic Society guidelines. <br> Methods: An anonymous eight-item survey was distributed among medical pro-fessionals in two teaching and two district general hospitals. <br> Results: In total 153 medical professionals were surveyed. Sixty-five percent have never had any training in administering LA. Most thought that arterial blood gas sampling was either“quite painful”(61%) or“extremely painful”(20%). However, 58%believed that patients should only “sometimes” be offered LA. Over half of the respondents (56%) never used LA before arterial blood gas sampling and 34%only used it“sometimes”. The majority (53%) stated that they would “sometimes” use LA in the future and 23% said that they would never use it. <br> Conclusions: Our results demonstrated that British Thoracic Society guidelines are not followed across the four hospitals. Despite the acknowledgment of arterial sampling being a painful procedure and the belief that patients should be offered LA at least“sometimes”, over half of the respondents never use it. Addressing the above-mentioned issues by introducing local guidelines and teaching sessions, as well as making LA more available, will help make this practice routine.