Dear editor,Palliative Care (PC) aims to improve the quality of life and alleviate the suffering of patients with serious and incurable conditions. With the aging of the population and the higher prevalence of chronic diseases, the number of people in need of this care has increased. PC is multidimensional and interdisciplinary; and can be provided at different levels of care by both general practitioners and specialists. Therefore, adequate training in this discipline must be required during the medicine degree to allow the development of the necessary skills for its application in medical practice.

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 ...