La durée de séjour en unité de soins palliatifs

The status of palliative care units needs to be redefined and this redefinition leads to some consequences on stay lasting. What about long staying patients? Can we find any criteria in order to limit these cases? This is a retrospective study involving all the patients admitted in a palliative care unit in the course of 2005. Neither the kind of cancer nor the dependence level, considered alone or together, but only the kind of major symptom, help to recognize a long-staying population. So, it is necessary to get means to carry out a reliable information. But it is also necessary to ask whether palliative care units may, without losing their own reason of being, try to limit staying lastings.