• Julien Cobert, Edie Espejo, John Boscardin, Hunter Mills, Deepshikha Ashana, Karthik Raghunathan, Timothy A Heintz, Allyson Cook Chapman, Alex K Smith, and Sei Lee.
• Julien Cobert is an assistant professor, anesthesia service, San Francisco Veterans Affairs Health Care System, California, and in the Department of Anesthesia and Perioperative Care, University of California, San Francisco.
• Am. J. Crit. Care. 2024 Nov 1; 33 (6): 462466462-466.

BackgroundSocial constructs like race can affect how patients are perceived and impact care. This study investigated whether mentions of race in notes for critically ill patients differed according to patients' race.MethodsThis retrospective cohort study included intensive care unit notes for adults (≥18 years old) admitted to any of 6 intensive care units at University of California, San Francisco, from 2012 through 2020. Notes were linked to National Provider Identifier records to obtain note writer characteristics. Logistic regression analysis with robust SEs clustered on note writers was adjusted for patient-, note- and clinician-level characteristics. Any race or ethnicity mention was the outcome of interest.ResultsAmong 5573 patients with 292 457 notes by 9742 unique note writers, 3225 patients (57.9%) self-reported their race as White, 997 (17.9%) as Asian, 860 (15.4%) as Latinx, and 491 (8.8%) as Black. Note writers documented race/ethnicity for 20.8% of Black, 10.9% of Latinx, 9.1% of White, and 4.4% of Asian patients. Black patients were more likely than White patients to have race mentioned in notes (adjusted odds ratio, 2.05 [95% CI, 1.49-2.82]).ConclusionsBlack patients were more than twice as likely as White patients to have race mentioned in notes. Note language containing information on social constructs has consequences for clinicians and patients reading notes and for algorithms trained on clinical notes.©2024 American Association of Critical-Care Nurses.

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