ICU consultants vary in the importance they give to different factors in deciding who to prioritize for ICU admission. Transparency regarding which factors have been considered in the decision-making process could reduce variability and potential inequity for patients.

Of the factors investigated, patient’s age had the largest impact at admission followed by the views of their family, and severity of their main comorbidity.

Physiologic measures indicating severity of illness had less impact than the gestalt assessment by the ICU registrar.

We identified four distinct decision-making patterns, defined by the relative importance given to different factors.

Informed by a literature review and data from observation and interviews with ICU clinicians, we designed a choice experiment. Senior intensive care doctors (consultants) were presented with pairs of patient profiles and asked to prioritize one of the patients in each task for admission to ICU.

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