Five-Year Experience of an Inpatient Palliative Care Unit at an Academic Referral Center.

Background: Palliative care units (PCUs) staffed by specialty-trained physicians and nurses have been established in a number of medical centers. The purpose of this study is to review the 5-year experience of a PCU at a large, urban academic referral center.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed a prospectively collected database of all admissions to the PCU at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the first 5 years of its existence, from 2012 through 2017.