INTRODUCTION: The high demands and current working conditions of nursing professionals who work in intensive care units' impact both their quality of life and their intention to rotate, and these in turn impact the quality of care. OBJECTIVE: Identify the relationship between quality of Work Life (QWL) and the intention to rotate and/or leave the organization of nursing profession in intensive care units. METHOD: Analytical cross-sectional observational study with 101 nursing professionals (NP) working in adult intensive care with more than one year of experience in the area. Simple random probabilistic sampling - 51NP and non-probabilistic convenience sampling - 50NP. The Quality of Life at Work - CVT GOHISALO instrument is applied plus five questions on turnover intention and other sociodemographic questions. The exploratory statistical analysis considered frequency tables and Chi square measures of association to develop the Logit model with the CVT variable as the exposure and the intention to rotate as the outcome. RESULTS: The dimensions of Quality of Life at Work that show the greatest dissatisfaction are integration with work - D3 (61%), job satisfaction - D4 (72%), personal development - D6 (67%) and free time management - D7 (75%). There is a high intention to change to another institution (57%) and to migrate to another country (63%). The intention to change to another institution can be explained by job satisfaction and institutional support (p <
0.001). CONCLUSIONS: There is an inverse relationship between satisfaction with the dimensions of quality of life at work and the intention to change to another service, institution, or independent work, which would imply developing strategies that improve CVT to reduce the intention to rotate.