More needles less pain: The use of local anaesthesia during emergency arterial sampling

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. Methods: An anonymous eight-item survey was distributed among medical professionals in two teaching and two district general hospitals. 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. 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.