This quantitative case study aimed to learn and analyze the personnel cost in nursing direct care in the intensive care unit. We opted to use a therapeutic intervention score index, TISS-28, for the analysis of the indirect gravity of patients and the dimension of the nursing staff working time. Evaluating the cost by a gravity score presented to be a logical and relatively simple method to allocate costs per patient in the intensive care unit. In this exploratory and descriptive study, the average TISS-28 per patient was 31 points, requiring a daily expenditure of care hours of R$ 298.69. It was evidenced in this study that personnel costs are variable since there are patients with different complexities. Therefore is possible to estimate the nursing staff cost by assessing its work load.
costs and cost analysis; intensive care; nursing
