Ethnic and Gender Based Admittance Patterns in the ICU

The dominating proportion of patients in the ICU are men. Studies indicate that men receive more mechanical ventilation, vasoactive drugs, renal replacement therapy, invasive monitoring and have longer length of stay in the ICU. These differences do not unambiguously translate into a survival benefit for men; if survival would be altered if women were admitted to ICU in the same extent is unknown.

Factors affecting ICU admission include age, co-morbidities, physiological parameters (indicating severity of the acute illness) and, additionally, the number of available ICU beds. Factors that should not affect ICU admission include patient gender or ethnicity.

This study aims at studying if bias against women and people of certain ethnicities exist. Do clinicians have differing thresholds for ICU admission due to non-medical reasons?

The investigators propose testing this hypothesis using a blinded randomized factorial survey study.