AbstractBackgroundPressure injuries (PIs) are a major problem for healthcare providers, impacting both care costs and patients' quality of life, although they are predominately preventable. These injuries are especially present in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) as a result of the severity of the clinical conditions of patients in this unit.AimTo develop a simplified version of the Braden scale by removing two of the most subjective subscores—Nutrition and Sensory Perception—in an attempt to reduce the chance of errors by the nursing team during the application of the scale.Study DesignA cross‐sectional study was conducted on data collected from patients admitted to the ICU of a private Brazilian tertiary hospital. The resulting data consisted of 5194 patients, 6353 hospital admissions, and 6974 ICU stays. The overall prevalence of PI was 1.09%.ResultsThe T‐test showed that both the Braden and the simplified Braden scores were significantly different between patients with and without PI (p < .001). Patients who developed PIs scored lower than those who did not. The area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve of the Braden Scale was 74.21% (95% CI: 68.61%–79.8%) and of the simplified scale was 72.54% (95% CI: 66.87%–78.22%). The Positive Predictive Value of the Braden Scale was 3.17% when interpolated at the same sensitivity as the simplified scale (47.37%), which achieved 3.26%.ConclusionsBy removing two of the six subscores of the Braden scale we propose a new tool for identifying patients at risk of developing PI in a more objective and fast way. Our results show that classification performance had little negative impact.Relevance to clinical practiceA simplified, less subjective scale allows for more precise and less time‐consuming risk classification.