Introduction: Hospitals of greater complexity tend to care for patients with advanced chronic diseases, which is why it is important to recognize the need for palliative care. Objective: To identify the proportion of patients who require palliative care in the medicine department of a Peruvian referral hospital. Methods: Observational, analytical, cross-sectional study. All hospitalized patients were studied in the Department of Internal Medicine of the Peruvian hospital during the period April-May 2018. To determine the need for palliative care, the NECPAL CCOMS-ICO © instrument was used. The quantitative variables are presented as median and interquartile range (IQR); and numerical variables, such as frequencies and percentages. For the comparison of numerical variables, the Mann Whitney test was used and the chi-square test for categorical variables.  Results: They were evaluated ...